Revision Spine Surgery: Pearls and Pitfalls

Alexander R. Vaccaro, MD, PhD, MBA, graduated Summa Cum Laude from Boston College in 1983 with a B.S. in Biology. He received his M.D. degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine where he was promoted with “Distinction.” He earned membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Honor Society and graduated with honors in 1987. He completed a year of Surgical Internship at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA and his Orthopaedic Surgery Residency at Thomas Jefferson University where he graduated in 1992. Dr. Vaccaro completed a Spine Fellowship at the University of San Diego, CA. He earned a PhD in 2007 in the field of Spinal Trauma. He is the Richard H. Rothman Professor and Chairman, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Professor of Neurosurgery at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA.

He was the recipient of the Leon Wiltse award given for excellence in leadership and clinical research for spine care by the North American Spine Society (NASS) and is the past President of the American Spinal Injury Association and current President of the Association for Collaborative Spine Research. He has over 530 peer reviewed and 195 non-peer reviewed publications. He has published over 300 book chapters and is editor of over 44 textbooks and co-editor of OKU-Spine I and editor of OKU-8. Dr. Vaccaro is the President of Rothman Institute, Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Co-Director of the Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center of the Delaware Valley and Co-Director of Spine Surgery and the Spine Fellowship program at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital where he instructs fellows and residents in the diagnosis and treatment of various spinal problems and disorders.

Ali Baaj, MD is a neurosurgeon who specializes in spinal surgery, with advanced training and expertise in spinal oncology and complex reconstructive surgery for spinal deformity, and both minimally invasive spinal surgery and open complex spine surgery. Before joining the faculty at Weill Cornell, Dr. Baaj served as the director of the Spinal Neurosurgery Program at the University of Arizona at Tucson, where he led the clinical program and founded the multidisciplinary spine conference and spinal research fellowship program. Dr. Baaj was the neurosurgery faculty recipient of the Humanism in Medicine award in 2013 and 2014 while at University of Arizona. Dr. Baaj earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Boston University before receiving his M.D. from Boston University College of Medicine in 2004. He completed a general surgery internship at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, followed by a neurosurgical residency at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Dr. Baaj received further training as a Research Fellow at the Spinal Biomechanics Laboratory at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix and as a Complex Spine Fellow at Johns Hopkins, with an emphasis on advanced techniques in spinal tumor resection and spinal reconstruction. He also completed a two-month traveling fellowship in Paris studying advanced techniques for pediatric deformity and scoliosis, with an emphasis on neuromuscular and idiopathic scoliosis. He is the lead editor of the best-selling, Handbook of Spine Surgery, now in its 2nd edition.

Gregory D. Schroeder, MD is Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He completed a two-year spine surgery and clinical research fellowship at the Rothman Institute at Thomas Jefferson University. He completed his orthopedic surgery residency program at Northwestern University in Chicago, and holds a Doctor of Medicine from Georgetown University School of Medicine.