A ground-breaking collaborative project between University of Birmingham and the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital has been awarded not one but two awards!
The project looked at the effect of wound irrigation with antibiotics in spinal surgery. Wound irrigation is the steady flow of a solution across an open wound surface to achieve wound hydration, to remove deeper debris, and to assist with the visual examination. This is a growing practice and one we have embraced at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital.
Consultant Spinal Surgeon, Mr Matthew Newton-Ede who has been central to this work commented, "In short, our research proved that antibiotics were safe with regard to bone function. This 'filled a hole' in the world literature regarding this emerging practice."
Back in August of this year, following the presentation of the work at a meeting in Washington, the team were awarded the Whitecloud Award for Best Basic Science Paper 2016.This is one of the world’s foremost spinal meetings and there are just two awards given each year, one for basic science and one for clinical. It's incredibly competitive, so to be given an award is a huge accomplishment.
Following the meeting, the research on antibiotics and bone fusion in spinal surgery won another award; the 'Best Podium Presentation' at the 2016 British Scoliosis Society meeting in Middlesbrough. In addition to this award, one of the papers that was published jointly with University of Birmingham was cited at the Scoliosis Research Society as “one of the three most important Basic Science papers in the last three years”.
It is fantastic that this collaboration between UoB and ROH is producing work that is really starting to get recognised nationally and internationally.
Consultant Spinal Surgeon, Mr Matthew Newton-Ede said, 'The portfolio of work, both published and presented, continues to grow. I know from conversations I have had with colleagues, that our work has changed practice in other major spinal centres as well as our own."
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