Historical Committee Update

George H. Thompson, MD
SRS Historian

The committee will be conducting videotaped interviews with numerous individuals at the 51^st Annual Meeting & Course in Prague, Czech Republic. This is in an effort to bring our video archives up to date and to add to our collection of interviews with significant influencers in the field of spine deformity. Scheduled interviews include Randal Betz, MD; Alvin Crawford, MD; Ronald DeWald, MD; Jean Dubousset, MD; John Kostuick, MD; Lawrence Lenke, MD; John Lonstein, MD; Richard McCarthy, MD; James Ogilvie, MD; Acke Ohlin, MD, PhD and Harry Shufflebarger, MD.

The Van Loon specimen is an adolescent idiopathic human spine specimen that was operated using Harrington Rod Instrumentation. The patient died nine months postoperatively and the spine was harvested.  The current owner, Dr. Piet Van Loon, is donating this specimen to the Harrington Archives, which are also housed at the University of Kansas Medical Center Archives with the SRS Archives. Dr. Van Loon will be presenting this donation to a representative from the Harrington Archives during the Opening Ceremonies of the Annual Meeting. As always, I highly encourage all of our members to visit the SRS and Harrington Archives as they are very interesting and informative. Please contact the SRS Office for more details on how to arrange a visit.

As previously noted, the timeline used for the SRS Museum has been made digital in more ways than one! First, visitors to the SRS website can take a virtual tour of the actual museum, http://www.srs.org/virtual-museum/am15/index.php. Additionally, the timeline has been made into a living digital timeline, http://www.srs.org/historical-timeline/. Currently, only items from the museum are listed on this timeline. The committee will be working on adding to the digital timeline over the next few years. In order to make this timeline as accurate and comprehensive as possible, the committee will be reaching out to the individuals directly related to timeline topics to provide a write-up.

We have been saddened thus far in 2016 by the death of several members.  These include Anthony Bianco, MD; Jimmy S. Daruwalla, MD; John H. Hurley, MD; O. Ross Nicholson, MD; and Klaus Zielke, MD.

Chair: George H. Thompson, MD Committee: Behrooz A. Akbarnia, MD; Jason E. Lowenstein, MD; Terry D. Amaral, MD; Alejo Vernengo-Lezica, MD; Patricia N. Kostial, BSN, RN; Jay Shapiro, MD; Hani Mhaidli, MD, PhD