James Mooney

But when you actually talk to the patient and figure out that this might be a single nerve that's affected, that minimally invasive decompression could give them years of relief before they need a big surgery.

And having that minimally invasive training has been very helpful in working these patients up and being able to offer them the least invasive approach.

And then, you know, anytime you operate on a patient, if you fuse a segment of the spine, you're subjecting the rest of the spine to more motion and potential breakdown and need for future surgeries.

So really...

My deformity training has helped me understand angles and preoperative planning, even for a small, single-level surgery.

It's really important to get that correction, even if you're doing a single-level 5-1 or 4-5 fusion.

In the grand scheme of things, if you get that wrong, you're setting the patient up for many future surgeries.

So I think that's where my minimally invasive training, UAB, is combined with the deformity training to really help me be able to offer a full gamut of spine procedures to patients.

Yeah, within the next year, I think AI is going to continue improving outcomes and

You know, it's yet to be seen the full extent of where ultraminimally invasive surgery is going to head.

I'm actively following that as well.

But I think it's going to be, you know, not one single factor, but a combination of all of these things that are intersecting at such an exciting time where you have

you know, new technologies, data, collaboration between surgeons, engineers, scientists.

And yeah, I don't think it's going to be one specific thing, but really a combination of all of these things we're talking about.

Yeah, for sure.

You know, it's a really exciting time for me being a new faculty at VCU.

There's really three categories that I think of in terms of growth over the next two years, and that's from a clinical standpoint, from an academic standpoint, and then from an educational standpoint.

And so, you know, clinically...

Our goals as a spine department are to increase access to care.

Historically, UVA and Duke have been the major centers in the area.