Patrick O'Leary, MD, a spine surgeon at Illinois-based Midwest Orthopaedic Center, discusses how spine surgery has changed during his career and what he anticipates for the medical specialty's future.
Question: What sparked your interest in spine surgery?
Dr. Patrick O'Leary: In medical school I was interested in neurology and neuroscience. I was fascinated with the nervous system and the ability to localize a lesion, in large part based upon the neurological exam. Then, I did my surgery rotation as a third year, and discovered that I really enjoyed doing procedures. Spine surgery, for me, was the perfect combination, allowing me to surgically intervene to help alleviate nerve-mediated pain associated with spinal disorders. While my practice also involves a substantial amount of spinal deformity work, most of my practice involves treating patients with arm or leg pain of a spinal origin, and I get to use the neurological exam daily to assist me with clinical decision making.
Q: How has the spinal care field evolved since you graduated from medical school?
PO: Two of the biggest evolutions in spine care since I have been in medical school include the increasing use of arthroplasty, particularly in the cervical spine, and the use of advanced intraoperative image guidance and navigation to assist with implant placement.
Q: What is the biggest challenge facing the spinal care field today?
PO: The biggest challenge we face as spine care professionals is communicating to our audience — patients, hospital administrators, payors — how effective spine care can be, particularly surgery. The surgical treatment of lumbar stenosis has been shown to be as cost effective, and generally as efficacious in terms of quality of life measures, as the total hip replacement. That is amazing! And yet, there is substantial reluctance from some patients to consider surgery due to fear of a bad outcome (or what they read on the Internet); there is increasing scrutiny over cost from hospital administrators looking to make cuts; increasing difficulty getting surgical procedures approved from payors. Our challenge as spine care providers is to "get the message out" that spinal procedures for the appropriate diagnoses can be literally life-saving operations for patients.
Learn more from Dr. O'Leary at the 15th Annual Spine, Orthopedic & Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference + The Future of Spine in June 2017! Click here for more information.
More on the Spine, Orthopedic & Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference:
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Dr. Anthony Yeung weighs in on the future of spine technology