Academic Opinion Leaders in the Field of Spine Surgery & Sacroiliac Joint Experts Attend SI-BONE's National Summit on the Diagnosis of Sacroiliac...( MINNEAPOLIS Sept. 1...),Health

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- SI-BONE, Inc. a San Francisco Bay-area, medical device company, announced the first ever meeting of thought leading spine surgeons to review data and develop a clinical diagnostic process for identification of SI Joint pathology, a frequent cause of low back pain.

Some of the assembled spine experts included Steven Garfin (former president of NASS, Chief of Orthopedics at UCSD), John Glaser (MUSC-Charleston), Arnold Graham-Smith (Jacksonville, FL), Leonard Rudolf (Lebanon, NH), Nick Shamie (UCLA), EJ Donner (Loveland, CO) and Jonathan Sembrano and Charles Ledonio (U of MN), and Mark Reiley (founder of Kyphon). The group was selected in order to have a balance of academicians and private practitioners with significant clinical expertise in diagnosis of LBP due to SI Joint pathology and over 400 SI Joint fusion procedures between them.

The SI Joint's primary responsibility is to transfer the weight of the upper body to the lower extremities. Despite the large number of patients with SI Joint symptoms today, most of the treatment focus in the spine has been centered on the disc. According to the speakers and numerous scientific clinical publications, 15-25% of individuals who present with lower back complaints actually had problems in their SI Joint. In the U.S., it is estimated over one million patients annually with low back pain (LBP) complaints may have SI Joint problems like degenerative arthritis and/or mal-unions of pelvic trauma. According to the group, this patient population may be underserved in terms of identifying the actual causes of LBP, and in formulating definitive treatment.

The Summit group reviewed over 80 peer-reviewed publications on SI Joint diagnosis to ascertain what diagnostic methodologies would yield the most practical clinical applications in spine surgery. Currently, according to Mark Reiley, MD, "orth
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