ARTICLE SUMMARY:
The annual Safety in Spine Surgery Summit seeks to disseminate best practices in spine surgery through unusually candid discussions among leading surgeons. This year’s focus on robotics and navigation and managing the intense pressures of a demanding field had some key takeaways: robotics are here to stay but in early stages of adoption and optimization, and honest conversations among surgeons and with their patients are important for the practice.
Most patients who undergo reconstructive surgery for spine deformities are satisfied with their decisions—more than 80% have no regrets and some 85% note mild to great improvement in their conditions two years postsurgery, according to studies. Demand for such procedures is growing as the population ages and surgeons, emboldened by advances in technology and techniques, expand their repertoire to more complex cases—in the US, by some estimates, more than 500,000 spinal fusion surgeries are performed annually, costing more than $24.3 billion.
At the same time, spine surgery is considered one of the riskiest surgeries, with procedure complication rates estimated to range from 20% to 90%—percentages that have not budged in years. The pressure to improve spine surgery from both a safety and clinical outcomes perspective, therefore, is intense.
To this end, top spine surgeons over the years have tackled challenges to improving safety and outcomes through formation of study groups; establishment of evidence-based best practice guidelines based on registry data and other data initiatives; formation of multidisciplinary teams to evaluate patients; implementation of systemic actions, such as improving selection of appropriate patients for high-volume fusion surgeries; and adherence to checklists for intraoperative and postoperative care.
These efforts and others were discussed May 31 in New York at the 9th annual Safety in Spine Surgery Summit, an annual meeting organized by Michael Vitale, MD, a pediatric spine surgeon and founder of the Safety in Spine Surgery Project (S3P), and colleagues at Columbia Orthopedics.
