This report was prepared by Lingjie Fu from China. He was granted with 12 weeks short term fellowship (1 October to 21 Decemer 2012) and train under the supervision of Michael Janssen at the Spine Education and Research Institute, Denver, USAI am Dr. Lingjie Fu from the Ninth People’s Hospital of Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China. From 1 Oct, 2012 to 21 Dec, 2012, I was fortunate to get the chance to be an AOSpine fellow to train with Dr. Michael Janssen in Denver, CO just after my five years resident training in our hospital. This experience is very important to me because of the training method of AOSpine contributing to a good spine surgeon. I would like to give my sincere thanks to AOSpine first and especially to Derek who gave me lots of help during my fellowship.Everything of my fellowship is smooth in Denver due to the aid of the staff in the Spine Education and Research Institute (SERI) of Denver. All the staff there, Shyan, Allie, Ruth, Devin, Jack, Connie, and Rachel are willing to help me at any time, and helped me to settle down with ease; I can put my heart in the full studying the AOSpine theory and manipulation. I learned a lot from Dr. Michael Janssen, Georgescu, Levine, and Big John. Different treatment choices are made to different degenerative neck and back pain patients, such as facet joint injection, decompression, anterior and posterior fusion. Dr. Michael Janssen especially gives me instructions about the techniques after every surgery and this makes me quickly comprehend the surgery. Dr. Georgescu is very familiar with the anterior lumbar exposure and he gives me much confidence to finish this by myself, no matter if it is one-level or multilevel fusion. Besides surgery I learned some perioperative managements of the patients, how to read SSEP, the cooperation of the anesthetists, and AOSpine manual.Here I would like to give my thanks again to all the staff in SERI of Denver, especially to my fellowship director, Dr. Michael Janssen. I fully enjoy the operations, clinics, discussions, readings, dinners, travels, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas gifts there, and this experience is memorable during my surgical career. Thank you!!
Denver is of great importance in USA because the first debate of 2012 US Presidential election is just there. THE BEST WAY TO ACHIEVE MORE IS JUST GOING TO DENVER!!
Source: www.aospine.aofoundation.org; January 3, 2013.
