Abstract
The Spine Surgery Unit of IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli is dedicated to the diagnosis and the treatment of vertebral pathologies of oncologic, degenerative, and post-traumatic origin. To achieve increasingly challenging goals, research has represented a further strength for Spinal Surgery Unit for several years. Thanks to the close synergy with the Complex Structure Surgical Sciences and Technologies, IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli, extensive research was carried out. The addition of the research activities intensifies a complementary focus and provides a unique opportunity of innovation. The overall goal of spine research for the Spine Surgery Unit and for the Complex Structure Surgical Sciences and Technologies is and has been to:
- investigate the factors that influence normal spine function;
- engineer and validate new and advanced strategies for improving segmental spinal instrumentation, fusion augmentation and grafting;
- develop and characterize advanced and alternative preclinical models of vertebral bone metastasis to test drugs and innovative strategies, taking into account patient individual characteristics and specific tumour subtypes so predicting patient specific responses;
- evaluate the clinical characteristics, treatment modalities, and potential contributing and prognostic factors in patients with vertebral bone metastases;
- realize customized prosthesis to replace vertebral bodies affected by tumours or major traumatic events, specifically engineered to reduce infections, and increase patients’ surgical options.
These efforts have made possible to obtain important results that favour the translation of basic research to application at the patient's bedside, and from here to routine clinical practice (without excluding the opposite pathway, in which the evidence generated by clinical practice helps to guide research). Although translational research can provide patients with valuable therapeutic resources, it is not risk-free. Thus, it is therefore necessary an always close collaboration between researchers and clinicians in order to guarantee the ethicality of translational research, by promoting the good of individuals and minimising the risks.
