The San Diego Spine Foundation – A Worthy Cause for Spine

The San Diego Spine Foundation was established by Behrooz A. Akbarnia, MD, largely to support spine-related research and education, the majority of which relates to children.

One such project is the study of natural history and evolving surgical treatment of progressive spinal deformity in very young children. Until recently, there were not many available options for the treatment of these children; for the most part, they had been ignored. Limited clinical studies exist, but many questions regarding prevention and treatment of severe deformities in children with immature spine remain unanswered. This group of children is often at greater risk for pulmonary insufficiency and even premature death due to progressive scoliosis and its detrimental effect on lung development.

Recently, under Dr. Akbarnia’s lead, the Scoliosis Research Society created a Growing Spine Committee, recognizing the urgent need for both basic science and clinical research in this area. Progress is being made in getting physicians interested in exploring current treatment methods and ways in which to improve them. Because the patient population is small, however, multi-center studies are required to evaluate these children more accurately and answer the clinically relevant questions. Unfortunately, due to the lack of financial incentive, grants are not readily available to support these projects.

Through the Growing Spine Fund, the San Diego Spine Foundation supports the Growing Spine Project and its newly-developed database, which was created without any outside funding sources. With the combined efforts of the Growing Spine Study Group, data is gathered prospectively and different treatment methods from both past and present are compared. We hope to better evaluate the benefits of procedures that control scoliosis while allowing for growth of the thorax, lungs, and spine over time.

The Growing Spine Project (approved by the Institutional Review Board of Children’s Hospital and Health Center) involves our spine center as the primary and central location for data collection. Because data such as growth measurements are so critical and since accuracy is a must, all participating spine centers are visited by physicians and researchers on our staff to assure uniform radiographic and clinical measurements for the purpose of accurate and complete data recording. Our center is then responsible for the entry of all data received for analysis. Currently, this project has no outside funding; we, therefore, are in need of sufficient financial resources required to support a research assistant as well as to cover other expenses.

The Growing Spine Project also involves basic science research. This includes biomechanical studies as well as histological studies such as analysis by electron microscope for changes in the facet joints cartilage of immature patients with scoliosis. The facet study was progressing well in Utah in 2004, yet it was brought to a halt due to lack of funding. There are a number of projects that we plan to undertake and we hope the Foundation will allow us to make this happen. We plan to begin formal fundraising in 2005.

Inquiries regarding potential contributions should be directed to our Project Coordinator, Pat Kostial, RN, BSN, at pkostial@sandiego-spine.com. We believe that our Foundation’s planned projects would fit both private and corporate requirements for a worthy spine research program support. Pat would be happy to send out the necessary tax forms and any additional information as needed. For more information about our Growing Spine Program, please visit the Growing Spine section on our website at www.sandiego-spine.com.