Walter Eckman, MD, founded Aurora Spine Center in Tupelo, Miss., in 1992. He has been in private practice since 1976 and is certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery. He focuses exclusively on degenerative disease of the spine.
Dr. Eckman is affiliated with numerous hospitals, including Marion Regional Medical Center in Hamilton, Ala., North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo and Calhoun Health Services in Calhoun City, Miss. During his career, he has served as president of the Mississippi Neurological Society and member of the North American Spine Society.
In 2011, Dr. Eckman presented the outcomes of 620 minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion procedures in 562 of his patients at the Society for Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery annual meeting. According to the study, 92 percent of patients had improved visual analog scale back pain scores after one year and 94 percent improved after two years.
Dr. Eckman earned his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and his neurosurgical residency at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He received additional training at the University of California in San Francisco and Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. He has served clinical associate at the National Institutes of Health.
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