Complex Spine Homepage

The spinal service sees over 1400 new patients each year from the South Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire area. Clinics are run from the Royal Hallamshire and Northern General Hospital sites and in addition to this we run outreach clinics at Doncaster Royal Infirmary and Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield.

We care for patients with a wide range of spinal and spinal cord pathology: degenerative conditions, nerve and spinal cord tumours, vascular malformations of the spinal cord, infections and trauma.

We perform over 600 procedures per year; these range from relatively common lumbar and cervical spine decompression procedures (i.e. microdiscectomy, anterior cervical spine decompression and fusion, lumbar spine decompression) to the more complex cases which include minimally-invasive percutaneous procedures, instrumented spinal fusion, intradural spinal tumours and vascular malformations, thoracic disc herniations, dysraphism and many more which often requires multidisciplinary approach. We have outstanding collaboration with other departments (neurophysiology, orthopaedics, thoracic surgery, pain management, infectious diseases, etc) which helps to deliver best care to our patients.

Our state of the art equipment helps us to be more accurate and less invasive and often do procedures which are otherwise extremely challenging. This includes top of the range microscopes, microinstruments, intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring, spinal navigation, intraoperative ultrasound, 3D x-ray, ultrasonic bone scalpel, CUSA, etc.

The spinal services at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals are a centre of excellence for spinal navigation and AOSPINE / EANS training centre. We are proud to have welcomed a significant number of trainees and international visiting fellows from all over the world to enhance their spinal experience and help to exchange the knowledge.

Patient Information Leaflets:

Lumbar discectomy/nerve root decompression
Lumbar spine stenosis – surgical options
Cervical foraminotomy for nerve root compression/radiculopathy
Instrumented fusions for Lytic spondylolisthesis
Nerve root injections

Clinical Research

We are carefully looking into the outcome of our operated patients, asking all patients that have undergone a spinal procedure to get involved with the British Spine Registry (BSR). This registry was set up in 2012 by the British Association of Spine Surgeons (BASS) to monitor patient outcomes following surgery, with the aim of improving these outcomes and patient safety.Participation from the patient is in the form of completing short periodic questionnaires collected before and after the surgery.

Useful Links

BASS – www.spinesurgeons.ac.uk
BSR – www.britishspineregistry.com

Complex Spine MDT

The Complex Spine MDT meet every Wednesday morning to discuss patients with a complex spinal pathology (tumours of the spine and spinal cord, trauma, deformity, infection, etc).

Core members list

Mr M Athanassacopoulos - Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
Mr E Bayley - Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
Mr D Bhattacharya - Consultant Neurosurgeon
Mr L Breakwell - Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
Mr N Chiverton - Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
Mr A Cole - Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
Mr J Tomlinson - Orthopaedic Surgeon
Dr D Connolly - Consultant Neuro-radiologist
Dr A Highland - Consultant Radiologist
Mr M Ivanov - Consultant Neurosurgeon
Mr R Ibrahim - Consultant Neurosurgeon
Mr A L R Michael - Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
Mrs R Newsome - Physiotherapist
Dr N Plunkett - Consultant in Pain Management
Mr M W Radatz - Consultant Neurosurgeon
Dr R Townsend - Consultant in Infectious Diseases
Dr S Kulkarni - Consultant Radiologist
Dr A Martin - Consultant Radiologist