Issue link: https://blog.providence.org/i/1427834
10 | Health Matters: Providence St. Joseph Hospital Complex Collaborative Spine Surgery People seek out this well- respected program for complex spine surgeries and surgical revisions. S pine surgery has been developing in leaps and bounds over the past 20 years, according to Jeffrey Deckey, MD, director of complex spine surgery at Providence St. Joseph Hospital. "And our program has also progressed. We have the latest instruments and technology and have become one of the most eminent programs in Southern California," he says. Samuel Bederman, MD, PhD, a spine and scoliosis surgeon at Providence St. Joseph, concurs. "We are a highly specialized and technical program, more so than many of the other hospitals where I have worked. We do everything from small surgeries to complex, multistage surgeries efficiently and smoothly, with the utmost of care." "We work with Children's Health Orange County for pediatric surgeries," says Dr. Deckey. "The program also trains new spine surgeons as part of a spinal surgery fellowship training program for doctors who have finished orthopedics and neurosurgery residencies. We are doing clinical trials for the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to develop new spinal procedures such as the artificial disk replacement. And St. Joseph's surgeons also are involved in research and serve as faculty, teaching all over the world." The St. Joseph spine program is unique because of the collaboration between the departments of orthopedics and neurosurgery. " Bowen Jiang, MD, a neurosurgeon and spine surgeon at St. Joseph, says, "We are very proud of the way the different specialists collaborate. The collegiality and friend- ship is great when it comes to working together." FIXING SURGERIES, SPINAL DEFORMITIES AND MORE "Forty to fifty percent of our procedures are revision spine surgeries," says Dr. Deckey. "Complex surgeries often include correcting previous surgeries with poor outcomes or significant spinal deformities such as scoliosis. Many of the surgeries are six to eight hours long and can take multiple days." Dr. Bederman says that with complex scoliosis surgery, "we can do surgery on people with [this condition] from childhood through the 80s. Most places in the country can't handle these complex surgeries." "As a neurosurgeon, I work on tumors in the spinal cord," says Dr. Jiang. "I will do that part, and then the other surgeons will put in rods and screws." One of those surgeons is Dr. Bederman. "I often collaborate with neurosurgeons," he says.