FDA Approves Next Generation Abbot Spinal Cord Stimulation Device

Based in Washington, D.C., Tony Jawhar delivers a host of healthcare solutions as Advanced Medical Systems CEO. A focus for Tony Jawhar is on assessing national and global healthcare trends, and he has a particular interest in spine surgery developments.

In May 2023, the FDA took a significant step in approving the use of Abbot spinal cord stimulation (SCS) devices for those who haven’t yet had back surgery. This decision followed a six-month study involving 200 patients who had on average more than a dozen years of chronic, disabling back pain. Reasons for not having back surgery included medical frailty and several degenerative spine issues that, while presenting significant symptoms, did not qualify for corrective surgery.

Over the course of the study, 85 percent of those who had the SCS device implanted registered a significant reduction in back pain. Effects spanned back function, pain, mental health, and quality of life improvements. This contrasted with improvements reported by only 7 percent of those who received conservative medical management.

Traditional spine stimulation systems employ “tonic stimulation,” which causes a tingling sensation in patients. In contrast, the latest generation SCS devices employ mild electrical energy that mimic electrical signals that the body normally sends. Rather than generating tingling, they mask pain-associated signals to the brain. The Abbot device is extremely small, around the size of a smartphone battery, and can be inserted in a minimally invasive procedure. Implantation typically requires one to two hours and can often be performed as an outpatient procedure.

North American Spine Society 2023 Annual Meeting

Tony Jawhar serves as owner and CEO of the medical device companies Advanced Medical Systems and Medbridge. An experienced entrepreneur, he has strong business development, innovation, and sales skills. To augment his professional activities, Tony Jawhar regularly attends the conferences of several medical organizations, including the North American Spine Society.

A multidisciplinary organization with members who span the globe, the North American Spine Society (NASS) focuses on advancing high quality, ethical, value-based and evidence-based spine care through education, research and advocacy. The group will host its 38th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, California, from October 18 to October 21, 2023. At the event, NASS will expand its evolving roster of clinical sessions with new entries for residents, fellows, and spine professionals who are in the early stages of their careers.

Highlights of the NASS 38th Annual Meeting will include roughly a dozen presentations in the event’s Surgical Stadium. These presentations will focus on innovative techniques for procedures such as endoscopic spine surgery as well as new surgical technology such as the OptiLIF Endo and CORUS Spinal systems. Attendees of the meeting will actually be able to handle various technological tools at what will be the largest spine product exhibition in the world.

The 2023 AANS Annual Scientific Meeting

The owner and CEO of Advanced Medical Systems and Medbridge, Washington, DC’s Tony Jawhar has a long history of work in the health care business sector, with a particular focus on surgical devices. Each year, Tony Jawhar attends the major annual gatherings of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and other large industry organizations.

The 91st American Association of Neurological Surgeons Annual Scientific Meeting 2023 (AANS 2023) took place from April 21 to April 24, 2023, in Los Angeles, California. Attendees gathered for presentations such as “i-FACTOR: A Unique Osteobiologic in Spinal Fusion Surgery” (which discussed fusion success rates among different treatment approaches to complex bone grafts) and “Navigated Microscope Integration and Heads Up Display in the Neurosurgical Workflow” (which discussed the value of integrating these two technologies into neurological surgery processes).

Participants also took advantage of training opportunities, such as learning about the latest best practices in neurosurgical practice-specific ICD-10 and CPT coding. This course, and many others at AANS 2023, were available for continuing medical education credit.

Prehabilitation and Better Spine and Knee and Hip Replacement Outcomes

Tony Jawhar is a Washington, DC, entrepreneur who delivers medical equipment marketing and sales solutions at the helm of Advanced Medical Systems. With a focus on healthcare industry trends that save lives, Tony Jawhar follows developments in orthopedic operative and preoperative care.

A study in April 2023 published in Orthopedics Today examined the efficacy of prehabilitation intervention programs in improving orthopedic surgery patient outcomes. The systematic review spanned four dozen randomized controlled trials from 2000 to 2022. The 3,570 patients, averaging 64 years, underwent either total hip or knee replacement (THR/TKR) or lumbar surgery.

The patients who engaged in the prehabilitation protocol underwent pain management, muscle-strengthening exercises, electrical stimulation, and acupuncture. In addition, preoperative and postoperative assessments spanned areas such as muscle strength and function, range of motion, pain score, depression, anxiety, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL).

Key findings were that patients who underwent prehabilitation before TKR demonstrated improved overall function and muscle and flexion strength compared to those who followed standard preoperative protocols. In addition, those who underwent prehabilitation before THR reported improved muscle strength and abduction and higher scores on HRQoL health surveys.

In the postoperative sphere, prehabilitation improved function among patients who underwent lumbar surgery at six months and those who underwent TKR at six weeks. The researchers concluded that supervised and unsupervised prehabilitation sessions were associated with improved outcomes, had minimal risks, and were most effective in regimens of at least two sessions a week for four to six weeks.

Three Innovative Healthcare Trends

Tony Jawhar is the CEO of Advanced Medical Systems, a healthcare company in Washington, DC. As a leading medical practitioner, Tony Jawhar is interested in the latest healthcare trends at both national and international levels.

The rise in technological innovations over the past years has resulted in new trends in the healthcare sector. Here are three innovative healthcare trends:

Telemedicine
The COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to telemedicine because of a need to reduce physical human interaction. Telemedicine refers to the act of accessing medical services online using technological tools like virtual meeting platforms, instant messaging, or phone calls. It has improved healthcare by providing people in remote locations with easy medical access, reducing the cost of healthcare services, and decongesting hospital wards.

Personalized Medicine
This is a customized approach to medical care where factors such as a patient’s age, genetic makeup, lifestyle, risk factors, etc., are considered in determining the kind of treatment they receive. It can help predict the effectiveness of certain drugs and any potential side effects. Personalized medicine could also allow patients to make more choices concerning the treatment they receive.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The use of AI for various tasks is another innovative trend that has taken over the healthcare industry worldwide. There is proof that AI tools have improved several aspects of healthcare, such as data collection and processing, patient monitoring, and decision-making. Researchers from MIT and Harvard University were able to track how COVID-19 affected people’s mental health by looking at the language they used to express their emotions regarding the pandemic. AI has also proven its usefulness in drug development by helping to predict the possible side effects of new drugs and the results of clinical trials.

How Fish Helps Stimulate Brain Health

Tony Jawhar is a spine care medical device entrepreneur. He is the current owner and CEO of Medbridge and Advanced Medical Systems, both companies in Washington, DC. Tony Jawhar has pioneered a lot of technological innovations in the healthcare industry. Some of his innovations are also beneficial to the human brain.

The human brain controls many functions that affect general health. This is why keeping the brain healthy and in good condition is crucial. A good way to do this is to stick to a healthy diet and remain healthy. Fish has many nutrients the brain needs to maintain proper cognitive functions. However, avoid fish high in mercury.

Omega-3 fatty acid is a dominant fatty acid found in fish. This fish component can help form new brain cells, even in the unborn children of pregnant women. Grey matter is where the neurons that retain and process information are stored. Therefore, fish are also essential for memory function in the brain as they can potentially escalate gray matter in the brain.

World Economic Forum Drives Health Care Partnerships on Global Scale

Tony Jawhar is an established Washington, DC, entrepreneur who heads Advanced Medical Systems, where he delivers dedicated sales and marketing solutions. One of Tony Jawhar’s areas of interest is trends in the global health care realm.

In an interview in March 2023, health care executive Dr. Shyam Bishen brought focus to the World Economic Forum, of which he is an executive committee member. As Dr. Bishen describes it, one key organizational mission is improving public health systems by bringing together public and private stakeholders and forging lasting coalitions that “keep the global population healthy.”

A major focus is on addressing climate change and the health of the planet, which impacts people’s well-being in areas ways that can be difficult to quantify. Among the issues being tackled is a rise in mosquito-borne viruses and other infectious diseases that occur as temperatures rise. In addition, water and air pollution have become ever more urgent issues, and medical care needs to organized and efficiently delivered in regions where coastal storms, torrential rains, and flooding are more likely to occur.

Also coordinating efforts to provide equitable access to medications and diagnostics, the World Economic Forum is setting up regionalized COVID-19 vaccine production capacities. This enables advanced vaccines to be manufactured in low- and middle-income countries, near to where large, in-need populations in reside.

Common Spine Surgeries

Tony Jawhar, an entrepreneur based in Washington, DC, is the CEO of Advanced Medical Systems. In his work, Tony Jawhar markets innovative devices physicians can use in spine surgeries.

Most spine surgeries fall into two broad categories: nerve decompression and spine stabilization. The most common decompression surgery performed in the United States is microdiscectomy. Physicians perform this procedure to correct bulging discs between the vertebral columns of the spine. When these discs bulge, they press nerves, causing pain that radiates to other parts of the body. Removing the bulging parts of the disc relieves pressure from the nerves.

Spinal fusion is the most common type of spine stabilization surgery. Physicians fuse or permanently join two bones in the spine with rods and screws.

Some procedures are a combination of both nerve decompression and spine stabilization. An example is anterior cervical discectomy and fusion surgery. In this procedure, physicians remove a damaged disc in the cervical spine through an incision in the neck. They then replace the disc with a spacer or bone graft to stabilize the spine and relieve nerve compression.

Three Common Fishing Knots

Drawing on over a decade of entrepreneurial experience in health care, Tony Jawhar is the CEO of Advanced Medical Systems, a neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery medical sales and marketing company he founded in 2009. In addition, he directs Medbridge and Innovation Spine, Washington, DC-based companies specializing in spine surgery and related research. Outside his professional engagements, Tony Jawhar enjoys fishing.

Knowing the different fishing knots is an underlying skill for any angler. Three of the most popular knots are:

• Fisherman’s knot

Also called an improved clinch knot, the fisherman’s knot is the most commonly used fishing knot. It is strong and easy to tie in a wide range of fishing lines, including co-polymer, fluorocarbon, and monofilament. Anglers predominantly use this knot to secure small lures.

• Palomar knot

Relatively simple yet strong, this knot holds well in all line types. The Palomar knot is the best choice for braid and fused lines, which many traditional knots fail to hold because of their slickness. Also, anglers going after large fish use this knot because it is hard to break.

• Loop knot

Also called the surgeon’s loop knot, this knot provides flexibility. It ties above the eye of the hook or lure, which enables them to move freely and attract fish.

2023 AANS Annual Scientific Meeting

A senior executive with a wealth of experience in the healthcare industry, Tony Jawhar is the owner and CEO of Advanced Medical Systems and Medbridge. To augment and inform his professional activities, Tony Jawhar regularly attends the annual meetings of organizations such as the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS).

The 2023 AANS Annual Scientific Meeting (AANS 2023) will take place from April 21 to April 24 at the Los Angeles Convention Center and the JW Marriott in Los Angeles, California. In addition to covering practical matters ranging from applying for neurosurgical residencies to providing neurotrauma and neurocritical care, this event will emphasize neurosurgeons’ roles in patient advocacy.

Highlights of AANS 2023 will include a keynote address by University of Michigan professor of neurosurgery Dr. Karin Muraszko and keynote lectures by Cleveland Clinic vice chair of neurosurgery Dr. Deborah L. Benzil and Indiana University School of Medicine chair of neurological surgery Dr. Shelly D. Timmons.