Spine Oncology

We live in a world surrounded by technology.  In a small handheld device that fits in the palm of our hands, we are able to talk face-to-face with friends and family from afar. We explore cultures from the other side of the world with the touch of a few buttons. And we can capture our experiences in high-resolution videos and photos that rival that of professionals. This technology has its roots as the first-generation iPhone in January 2007. If you ask a teenager today, they may describe this as a great innovation to our current iPhone model. For most of us, we saw this as the evolution of the iPhone. Each successive iPhone iteration had a little more memory, higher camera megapixels and small features that we’ve come to realize we can’t live without. These incremental changes were not derived from the imagination of Apple engineers. Rather they are small innovations from the collective wisdom of iPhone users who shared ideas and real-world experiences.

This path of innovation parallels that in spinal oncology. Less than two decades ago, patients with spinal tumors were subjected to highly invasive and morbid spine surgeries or subjected to chronic pain and neurologic deficits from spinal instability as a sequela to radiation treatment. We now have adopted less invasive approaches such as separation surgery, or MIS technologies such as kyphoplasty, radio frequency ablation and LITT.  As our field continues to evolve, we rely on spine surgeons to contribute to the innovations. The 2023 AANS/CNS Tumor Section Symposium provides a great venue to share ideas and real-life experiences with fellow spine surgeons. We hope to see you there.