Everard Munting (Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium), the current president of Eurospine, talks to Spinal News International about this year’s annual meeting, which took place between the 6–8 October in Vienna, Austria. Munting notes that “everybody was extremely happy to be there again in person” after more than a year of online-only events due to COVID-19.
A key theme among many of the talks during the meeting was about having “good indications for treatment”, which Munting believes is “probably our best contribution to affordable, secure care”. Having strong indications is what “makes a good surgeon, and a happy patient,” he adds.
Munting also discusses the future of spine surgery, as well as his hope that there will soon be more “really strong, large, high-quality registries”, which he says provide the possibility to create algorithms for patient-specific treatment. He also highlights the importance of outcome predictors and how they can help patients give “much better informed consent” and ultimately “allows them to make a better choice”.
