I have just spent the past 4 days at the British Association of Spinal Surgeons 2019 Conference which was an excellent event. As a member of the executive committee I was involved in the organisation of the meeting, giving some lectures and hosting discussions but more importantly I was able to attend some great [...]
I felt it was appropriate, and interesting, to write about the positive effects of exercise and low back pain as a follow up to the report on the causal link of sitting for long periods and low back pain. If you needed another reason to exercise, a 2016 study showed that exercise alone has [...]
Many studies, including a recent study published in the ‘The Spine Journal’ have shown a causal link between sitting time and low back pain. Low back pain is the most common musculoskeletal problem in the world and it is estimated that up to 80% of the general population will have back pain [...]
Recently there has been a lot in the news about opioid addiction, abuse and its negative effects especially in the USA. Opiates are a family of drugs that are naturally derived from opium from the poppy plant. Opioids are both the natural and synthetically produced drugs. They work by triggering the release of the [...]
Last week I wrote about an exciting new technology that is using 3-D printers to make implants or ‘scaffolding’ that is being used in research for a method to repair spinal cord injuries. Since then I have seen the paper published in the ‘Nature Medicine’ Journal titled ‘Biomimetic 3D-printed scaffolds for spinal cord injury [...]
There has been a lot of studies and articles in the press about the use of Virtual Reality (VR) therapies as a clinical tool to manage both acute and chronic pain and I think this is very interesting. The theory is that patients suffering from uncontrollable pain can immerse themselves into an interactive virtual [...]
In the ‘Good Health’ Section of the Daily Maily, 22/01/19, there was an article about an incredibly exciting new technology that could potentially change the lives of patient’s with spinal cord injuries. Spinal cord injuries can result in patients being paralysed, doubly incontinent and in some cases are fatal. Scientists at the University of California [...]
[fusion_separator style_type="none" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" id="" sep_color="" top_margin="" bottom_margin="" border_size="12" icon="" icon_circle="" icon_circle_color="" width="" alignment="center" /] Would YOU try it? Metal pegs in your pelvis that really can end back pain In July there was an article in the Daily mail about sacro-iliac joint pain and the experience of a lady who had suffered for more [...]
Dr Michael Mosely is a great TV doctor who describes himself as being "a big fan of trying to find alternatives to medication". You may have recently watched him on the BBC2 Horizon programme on the 4th October 2018. This episode was titled "The Placebo Experiment: can my brain cure my body?". It was a [...]
[fusion_separator style_type="none" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" id="" sep_color="" top_margin="" bottom_margin="" border_size="12" icon="" icon_circle="" icon_circle_color="" width="" alignment="center" /] In November 2017 I went to Belgium for the 24th Brussels International Spine Symposium – the title of the meeting was: “Spondylolisthesis revisited – Spondylolysis, lytic and degenerative spondylolisthesis. The controversies in ethiopathogenesis, management and costs.” In summary it was [...]
