David Jaffray (right) returned to Scotland from Oswestry. The introduction from Niall Criag set the scene for this spine "legend". David did not disappoint when looking back over a 5 decade career.
It was also good to hear from a Glasgow spine hero coming up from Leeds, Robert Dunsmuir. Rob looked at "History of Innovations in spine surgery", particularly those that did not work out.
Mo Abdelsadg presented on the recent introduction of spinal endoscopy to the NHS. Along with spine surgeons Likhith Alakandy, Chris Barrett and Calan Mathieson who were present, they recognised the large team in Greater Glasgow and Clyde who worked in this project. In just one year the safety and efficacy is becoming clear, with patients really welcoming the option of day case discectomy spine surgery.
The first prize in the free papers was won by two Aberdeen medical students, Kiara Garg (left) and Rawan Almamari for their paper, "A Three-Month Snapshot of Metastatic Spinal Cord Compression Presentations at a Tertiary Neurosurgical centre". Everyone enjoyed discussing their work which had been supervised by Pete Bodkin. The applause was lead by Tony who announced their win. More importantly, Kiara said after, "It was a great learning experience for both of us and we had an amazing time." Wonderful.
The runner up in the free papers was Muyed Mohamed for his paper, "Assessment of Orthopaedic Spinal Training in Scotland". Muyed did this work as an orthopaedic trainee with Gerry Cousins in Inverness. We all agreed this was essential to understnad and develop further spine surgeons from the discipline of trauma and orthopaeidcs.