Endoscopic Spine Demand is Exposing a Training Gap
Becker’s Spine Review with Dr. Ben Burch
Endoscopic spine surgery is advancing faster than the workforce trained to perform it.
That, Ben Burch, MD, believes, is the field’s real bottleneck.
“I don’t think we have a technology problem in spine surgery,” Dr. Burch, an orthopedic spine surgeon at Atlanta Spine Institute, told Becker’s. “I think we have a training pipeline problem.”
Most practicing spine surgeons were not trained in endoscopy during residency or fellowship. The faculty who trained them often were not either. As endoscopic techniques expanded in North America, established surgeons first had to learn the procedures themselves before training programs could begin incorporating them.
