Spinal fusion will remain a “workhorse” in spine care even as motion-preserving care continues to improve, Timothy Witham, MD, predicts.
Dr. Witham is director of the Johns Hopkins Bayview Spine Program in Baltimore and serves as a professor. He also leads the Johns Hopkins Neurosurgery Spinal Fusion Laboratory.
He also said “disruptive” technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality and robotics will become stronger in spine surgery.
“Augmented reality and robotic surgery will go beyond just instrumentation placement,” he said. “The decompression, spinal tumor resection, osteotomies and correction of deformities will be heavily assisted by augmented reality and robotic techniques. In the long term, imaging techniques will evolve to allow for the imaging of pain and not just anatomical structures. Incisionless surgery will be realized and preventive medicine will play a much bigger role. Everyone will get imaging at a young age with the use of only an iPhone i-phone. Degenerative conditions will be treated with the use of regenerative substances and growth factors that will be injected into targeted sites. Will we eliminate the spinal surgeon? Maybe, but maybe not the spine care physician.”
Dr. Witham earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University, and he completed his residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Before joining Johns Hopkins in 2005, he was chief neurosurgeon at Keesler Medical Center at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss.
Dr. Witham is speaking at Becker’s 22nd Annual Spine, Orthopedic and Pain Management-Driven ASC + The Future of Spine Conference, set for June 19-21 at the Swissotel Chicago.
