President's Message

Paul D. Sponseller, MD, MBA
SRS President 2019-2020

The 2019 Annual Meeting in Montréal was a success, thanks to Firoz Miyanji’s Program Committee which found a good balance of instructional and scientific content. Thanks also to Burt Yaszay’s Education Committee for a stimulating session on practice improvement. Attendance met expectations, at 1407 attendees.

Congratulations to Clinical Hibbs Award winner Using Humerus Ossification and Cobb Angle to Predict Progression to Surgery in Scoliosis Patients, presenting author Brian G. Smith, MD, and to Basic Science winner A Multi-ethnic Meta-analysis Defined the Association of rs12946942 with Progression of Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis, presenting author Kazuki Takeda, MD, PhD.

Due to the strategic decision to space out our educational offerings, IMAST is just over four months away, April 1-4 in Athens, Greece. Over 800 abstracts were received, which indicate interest and a strong meeting. If you submitted an abstract, watch your emails for notifications on December 20.

A Fellowship Mentorship Task Force has been created and is being led by Brian Smith. It will provide targeted opportunities for young surgeons in a variety of ways, including at both meetings, building a core of talent for our future.

Please see the Awards & Scholarships article for the announcement of the 2020 SRS Traveling Fellows - congratulations!

SRS, POSNA, and OREF have come together to create a collaborative grant for large clinical or basic projects on Spinal Growth. This grant will leverage a modest amount of SRS money more than five-fold for a grant of relevance to our mission. Recognizing the diversity of our members’ interest, future collaborative grants will tackle other topics. Letters of Intent were due on December 8, please watch for future updates.

It is an honor to serve as your President. Happy Holidays and successful 2020 to all!

Sincerely,
Paul Sponseller