Chad Campion, MD, of Memphis, Tenn.-based Campbell Clinic is taking the future of endoscopic spine education into his own hands.
He launched a first-of-its kind endoscopic spine surgery fellowship for post-fellowship or practicing orthopedic spine surgeons. Lasting up to three months, the fellowship covers uniportal and biportal endoscopic techniques.
Dr. Campion told Becker’s he wanted to offer an endoscopic training option that was vendor-agnostic and had hands-on training beyond a short-term class. The training also folds in outpatient surgery lessons.
“Most of what I do is at the surgery center, and almost all of my endoscopic surgeries at the surgery center,” Dr. Campion said. “So fellows get an outpatient and ASC experience as well. It’s really a graduated fellowship where for the first case or two they’re mostly observing me. Then they start to do more and more portions of the procedure. In the end, my past fellow was doing the procedures from start to finish by himself in an ASC in a timely manner. I think it worked out for him to really be comfortable doing the surgeries, and they weren’t the bread and butter starting cases that we recommend people do. He was doing complex surgeries by the end, and was really comfortable doing them.”
Dr. Campion said he also discussed challenges with reimbursement for endoscopic spine surgery with his first fellow so far.
“Something is going to change one way or another, because right now, it’s very expensive to do these procedures, and the facilities are not reimbursed any more than doing any other procedure,” Dr. Campion said. “There’s still some payers that say this is experimental. There’s some that just won’t pay for it at all. So there’s a lot of unanswered questions as of right now.”
For other surgeons and practices that want to follow his lead, Dr. Campion said that volume was crucial to strong endoscopic spine training. While this can be incorporated into a regular spine fellowship, Dr. Campion said that shorter and dedicated endoscopic programs are more ideal during a time when the technique isn’t as mainstream in current training programs.
“It’s just getting reps on the scope,” he said. “I think the shorter time period where you’re really devoting a lot to working through the scope with somebody who’s experienced is really the best way to do it. It really is a different type of surgery that we’re doing. You need to know the anatomy and know the other surgeries in order to understand what you’re doing. I think three months, or mini fellowships, is really a great option because you can take spine surgeons who are practicing elsewhere and, in a relatively short period of time, get them very comfortable with this technology. And there’s not really another way to do that. Weekend courses and watching YouTube videos just isn’t the best way to teach somebody surgery.”
