At the meeting I attended in Japan, there was an exciting talk about exoskeletons and how research is enabling paralysed patients to control exoskeleton bodysuits with their mind. Exoskeleton, by definition, is a “skeleton outside of the body”. Human exoskeletons are motorised external frames or ‘bodysuits’ that can be worn to support a person [...]
I recently attended the First Biennial International Sports and Spine Congress held in Tokyo, Japan. Organised by the Seattle Science Foundation, leading members of the international spinal surgical community discussed and debated controversies in the management of spinal conditions and injuries in sportsmen and women. Topics ranged from traumatic brain and spine sporting injuries [...]
There has been a lot of news recently about ‘Mindfulness’ and its benefits so I thought I would write a little about its history and and an overview of how it works. Mindfulness does not suit or work for everyone but I think it is important to understand the scientific basis of Mindfulness and that [...]
Research has shown that interactively encouraging patients to perform exercise after lumbar surgery has beneficial effects compared giving them simple written advice and less regular follow-up. The report which was presented at EUROSPINE 2019 suggested that “psychosocial behavioural intervention administered in the spine care setting was successful in increasing physical activity after recuperation from [...]
Scientists from the University of Manchester have been looking at how and if the weather affects peoples pain levels. The study was funded by the charity ‘Versus Arthritis’ and looked at data collected from 2,658 people, who provided daily information on pain levels for six months. The group had a range of different health issues, predominantly [...]
A life-sized model has been unveiled today showing what desk-bound office workers will look like in the future unless the work environment and people’s behaviours change. The life-sized doll named Emma has: a permanently hunched back from leaning over desk varicose veins from poor blood circulation due to sitting down too long red eyes [...]
A report presented at EUROSPINE 2019 shows that decompression surgery remains the ‘gold-standard’ for lumbar spinal stenosis. A long-term study looking at decompression surgery versus stand-alone interspinous process devices in the treatment of spinal stenosis was reported at EUROSPINE 2019. The results demonstrate that even though implantation of a stand-alone interspinous process device (IPD) can [...]
Horatio’s Garden has just announced that Princess Eugenie has become the charity’s Royal Patron. Her Royal Highness will be supporting the charity’s vision of bringing thriving gardens to all the UK’s regional spinal injuries centres. As many people know, Princess Eugenie had corrective spinal surgery for her scoliosis when she was 12 years old at [...]
The past week has been Back Pain Awareness Week 2019 and the focus this year has been on education. BackCare has run a campaign targeted at children and young people with an aim to educate them on how to look after their spines whilst they are young which will hopefully prevent them from developing [...]
A new, alternative intro-operative technology for imaging patients, called the Loop-X was unveiled at the North American Spine Society (NASS) 2019 conference last week by a company called BrainLab. It is still in the testing stage and has not yet been approved by the FDA in America or any authority elsewhere in the world and [...]
