David L. Skaggs, MD

Hello.

Thanks for having me.

Love Becker's.

Love keeping up with what's new in spine.

Sure, absolutely.

I'm now the co-director of spine at Cedars-Sinai, along with Dr. Alex Tuchman, who's the neurosurgical co-director.

We probably have about 30 spine surgeons here.

We run seven or eight spine rooms a day and believe very deeply that a combination of neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons working together deliver the best spine care.

I was here for five years.

Before that, I was at Children's Hospital Los Angeles for 25 years.

It's been very invigorating and eye-opening to come to an adult spine center and honestly learn about some of what we're going to talk about today, new technology and how we could make spine care better for children with new technology.

Yeah, so one of the biggest is just happening right now.

It is getting a synthetic CT from an MRI.

And it's probably most important in children because children are most susceptible to radiation.

And what it is, it's one of the few things I've seen in medicine where AI actually makes a difference, you know, in practical terms.

And now what happens is when we get an MRI,

a CT comes out.

In addition, really just doing one quick sequence might take a few minutes longer, and you can get an amazing quality CT that's accurate to within one millimeter, including three-dimensional reconstructions.

So for pediatrics, what this does is save children from unnecessary radiation.

But if we think bigger picture in adult spine, what it could also do is save people from getting two studies.