Spine
In the realm of spinal fusion surgery, the quest for faster, safer, and more reliable bone formation has led to…
Carmel, Ind.-based Goodman Campbell plans to open its 13th location, a new brain and spine facility in Fishers, Ind., Current reported Sept. 13. The facility is under construction, and the clinic is set to open in 2027. The new location…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Sept. 11 affirmed decisions in a patent infringement case between Moskowitz Family and Globus Medical, according to court documents reviewed by Becker’s. Moskowitz Family sued Globus Medical in November 2019,…
Spine surgeons can operate on patients today who might not have been considered surgical candidates years ago. The harder question is determining which of them should be. As patients live longer with diabetes, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease and other chronic conditions,…
A mental health intervention that began before surgery reduced postsurgery anxiety and depression among older adults, according to a clinical trial led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The Sept. 9 study, published in JAMA…
Physicians have long ranked prior authorization among the most maddening parts of practicing medicine, and UnitedHealthcare recently pledged to cut its prior authorization requirements by 30%. But one spine surgeon said the cut leaves the most significant bottleneck completely untouched. …
The hardest spine operations can require extensive planning, hours in the operating room and significant resources before and after surgery. But the systems that pay for that care do not always recognize what makes one case substantially more complex than…
For Emeka Nwodim, MD, the future of independent medicine may hinge on a seeming contradiction: Physicians may have to get bigger to remain independent. The economics that once allowed an orthopedic practice to thrive largely by seeing patients and performing…
For most spine surgery patients, preoperative workup follows a familiar script: bloodwork, imaging of the area to be operated on, maybe a cardiac clearance if there’s a history of heart disease. Bone health rarely makes the list. Every fusion patient…
Reoperation is the single biggest driver of lost cost-effectiveness in spine surgery, and one University of California San Francisco surgeon-researcher is building a dataset aimed at proving that shorter follow-up windows can still predict long-term success. Praveen Mummaneni, MD, professor…
Spine surgeons spend years learning when and how to operate. Recent Becker’s conversations suggest another skill becomes increasingly important with experience: knowing when not to. For some patients, that means surgery is unlikely to improve the symptoms driving the visit.…