The experts of the Weill Cornell Medicine Brain and Spine Center made a significant contribution to this year’s meeting of the AANS/CNS Joint Section on Disorders of the Spine and Peripheral Nerves, held last month in Las Vegas. Our faculty members directed and lectured at courses and moderated panel discussions, and several of our residents and a past fellow presented, spoke, and won awards for their work.
Dr. Roger Härtl, chief of spinal surgery and director of the new Weill Cornell Medicine Center for Comprehensive Spine Care, co-directed the “Hands-on Spinal Navigation” course and Dr. Kai-Ming Fu co-directed “Spinal Deformity Surgical Planning Practical.” Dr. Ali Baaj moderated the “What’s New” session and co-hosted a symposium on “Paradigm Shifts in Spinal Deformity Treatment: Case Examples: Collaboration Between Orthopaedic and Neurological Spine Surgeons.”
Our neurosurgery residents and fellows were important participants in the meeting as well:
• Chief Resident Nelson Moussazadeh, M.D., gave a talk on his work on the evolutionary dynamics of metastatic renal cell carcinoma, which uses advanced “next-generation” sequencing to study what makes tumor cells metastasize to organs like the brain and spine. Based on his current progress, Dr. Moussazadeh hopes to develop biomarkers and drugs to prevent metastasis to the CNS. (More about Dr. Moussazadeh’s work.)
• Fourth-year resident Ibrahim Hussain, M.D., was presented with a Charles Kuntz IV Scholar Award at the Young Neurosurgeons Dinner for the oral presentation of his paper "Patient-reported Outcomes After Surgical Stabilization of Spinal Tumors: Symptom-based Validation of the Spinal Instability Neoplastic Score (SINS) and Surgery." Dr. Hussain made another oral presentation of his paper "Cervical Total Disc Replacement Using Tissue-engineered Intervertebral Discs Combined with an Anterior Bio-resorbable Stabilization System in an Ex Vivo Canine Model." (More about Dr. Hussain’s work.)
• Dr. Peter Grunert, a former fellow of Dr. Hartl, was also presented with a Charles Kuntz IV Scholar Award for his presentation of “Biomechanical Evaluation of Lumbar Decompression Adjacent to Instrumented Segments,” which he co-authored with Anna Newcomb, Brian Kelly, and Dr. Härtl.
Dr. Baaj has been invited to serve as a scientific program committee member for next year's meeting. Dr. Fu serves on both the planning committee and the executive committee.
