​Instituto Nacional de Rehabilitación—Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico

Center description:

This is a comprehensive spine center. We attend all aspects of spine surgery, degenerative spine and deformity are our main areas of expertise but we also attend trauma, pediatric deformity and tumoral pathologies. The fellow will have the opportunity to see the full range of spine surgical pathologies.

All the elective surgical cases are reviewed at the weekly spine surgery clinic session. In this session we also review the postoperative cases of the week in order to see "what could be done better". The spine surgery fellow presents all postsurgical cases and an article related to the case is presented.

We have four surgical days in every day we try to do 2 surgical procedures and 2 pain management procedures. 

Our spine surgery service organization is:  1 Head of spine surgery service and 3 associate professors of the service. 5 specialists in rehabilitation medicine. 1 manager of research and 3 administrative staff.

We do research in all type of pathologies and try that every surgical case is associated to a research protocol. We take into account all to work done during research to decide the order of the author on the manuscript publication.

With us the fellow is encouraged to attend conferences and local meetings as the following: AO Spine International, Scoliosis Research Society, North American Spine Society, Asociación Mexicana de Cirujanos de Columna AMCICO. Industry meetings and workshops (Depuy Synthes and Medtronic).

Most frequent pathologies:

Degenerative

Surgical procedures:

305 per year

• Degenerative: 220 per year
• Deformity: 35 per year
• Trauma: 30 per year
• Tumor: 10 per year
• Infection: 10 per year 

Fellowship types:

Observership, Short-term, Associate Fellow

Language requirements:

Portuguese, Spanish

Vacancies per year:

Observership: 3 per year
Short Term: 1 per year
Associate fellow: 6 per year

Fellowship start:

Associate fellow: March
Short Term: March
Observership: Anytime

Program Characteristics:

Objectives

Training the orthopedic surgeon or neurosurgeon in the whole management of the spine pathology.
Developing the necessary skills for prevention, diagnosis and treatment in degenerative, deformity and trauma spinal patients.
Acquiring skills in the field of research, acquiring clinical data and manuscript preparations.
Developing knowledge and skills on different aspects of medical – patients' relationship, professional practice and ethical behavior.

Methodology

1. Clinical practice
Weekly spinal unit meeting where we review: treated cases revision, lectures, and review of complex preoperative cases.
Daily spine surgery service round with fellows and attendings at 07:00 am.
Clinics with one surgeon in charge twice a week from 08:00 to 14:00 hrs.
Operating room 1 time per week (Two or three surgical procedures per day). The fellow will participate as a second or third assistant in the procedure.

2. Research
The fellow will participate in research protocol which will be allocated based on the time of your stay and your research performance. He will participate in the clinical research of the spine unit.

3. Academic
The fellow should present at least one preoperative clinical case and a postoperative case once a week and a bibliographic review twice a month in clinical session.
The fellow must prepare at least two revision monographs during his fellowship.

4. Other activities
Optional rotations are available including: Microsurgery in biotheria. Rotations in the rehabilitation services of spinal cord injuries, electrophysiology and MRI service.

5. Evaluation
The fellow will be evaluated during each month by the surgeon in charge of the AO Spine Center and the evaluations established by the AO Spine fellowship program will be followed.
 

Timetable:

Full-time regime Monday to Friday from 07:00 AM to 07:00 PM Saturday from 09:00 AM to 12:00 PM