Dear Reader

 

The first half of 2019 has already passed and I would like to reach out to you with some exciting news from AOSpine.

 

I am glad to share the good news that there are some exciting and impactful initiatives for our members very soon. The “AOSpine Global Diploma Project” will be launched in early 2020 with the oral exams being planned during the Global Spine Congress in Rio. This will allow surgeons worldwide an opportunity to have a formal certification for their knowledge in spine surgery from an international society like AOSpine. I would like to thank our education commission led by Bryan Ashman for working out the curriculum and the details of the examination.

 

The second project is the initiation of “Expert Clinical Guidance Forums”. These international clinical forums will bring together regional experts to condense and provide their experience in demanding clinical situations often faced in daily practice. The summary of their collective experience and opinion will be very valuable to all our members. More details of these two programs will be available soon.

 

The Global Spine Congress 2019, which took place in May in Toronto, Canada again set new standards and is growing exponentially. A record 1,501 abstracts were submitted for poster presentation, and 210 expert speakers from countries around the world presented their research. This newsletter reports about the highlights of the Global Spine Congress—the AOSpine Member Representative Election, a report about the Fellows Alumni gathering, the launch of the new Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery curriculum and the women in spine networking event.

 

Furthermore, lifelong learning is extremely important for any surgeon to keep current and abreast of all knowledge and development in the field. My colleague Satish Rudrappa, a remarkable neurosurgeon from India and the neuro education member of the AOSpine Asia Pacific regional board stresses the importance of lifelong learning, both for individual surgeons and the profession as a whole.

 

AOSpine continues to be at the forefront of research: AOSpine Knowledge Forum (KF) Tumor has created a multicenter international prospective registry for the management and outcome of metastatic spine tumors, referred to as “M-TRON”. The aim is to establish a global network of spine oncology centers that contributes to a common clinical database.

 

AOSpine Knowledge Forum (KF) Deformity has launched a study to better understand and interpret neuro-monitoring alerts during complex high-risk corrective spinal deformity surgery. The AOSpine Spinal Deformity Intraoperative Neuro-Monitoring (SDIM) study is an international collaboration with neurophysiologists, anesthetists, and surgeons and will add considerable new knowledge in the field.

 

I am sure that you will find this issue interesting and informative and look forward to sharing more news with you in early fall.

 

Yours in AOSpine

 

 

S Rajasekaran

Chairperson

AOSpine International

 

 

Women in spine

 

 

M-TRON