When I started looking at this, I found a press release from 2006 that talks about Stan Schiffer being the most experienced hydrocision user at the time. He called me today and we spent about 1/2 hour discussing the state of spine, including hydrocision. He still uses it, but for discectomy, not fusion prep. What he does is much different than the 'normal' use, but he likes the system and gets excellent results with it. I asked how many cases he'd done with hydrocision and he's stopped counting. "Hundreds and hundreds was his reply." The press relase talked about 100 cases more than 2 years ago.
It's been a while since we'd spoken, so it was great to catch up with him. We met at my first spine conference in 2002 and he's been very helpful to me and many of my clients since then. He's a pioneer in Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery and I've been up to see him do surgery (cervical and lumbar) several times. Nice guy... good surgeon. It's interesting that the recent seminar brings me back to one of the first doctors I'd met in my new life after my surgery.
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