Rachel Bratescu, MD, Orthopaedic Surgeon and member of the GW Spine and Pain Center at George Washington University Hospital
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What is Dr. Rachel Bratescu's background and expertise?
This is Carly Beam with the Becker Spine and Orthopedics Podcast, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Rachel Protescu with George Washington University Hospital. Rachel, thank you so much for being here today.
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled.
Absolutely. And before we dive into our discussion, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background?
Yeah. So my name is Rachel Bertescu. I'm an orthopedic spine surgeon in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at George Washington University, where I'm faculty in Washington, D.C.
And Dr. Bertescu, what are your top three goals in your work this year?
Yeah, I would say great question to kick off the new year. Number one, my number one goal, I would say is incorporating endoscopy in my practice. So if you're not familiar, or those are not familiar, spinal endoscopy is a technique that a lot of people are more familiar with in the context of other joints, right? So the shoulder, the knee and the hip, for example. It's the idea of doing the work that you need to do as a surgeon through one portal while viewing and seeing what you're doing in another portal. What's really exciting is that this technique can also be translated to spine surgery. This was a technique I trained in during one of my fellowships, my orthopedic spine fellowship at NYU. I was trained in biportal endoscopy.
What makes this unique is that it is essentially doing ultra minimally invasive spine surgery. This is incredibly important when we are looking to offer patients less invasive forms of surgery that can get them out of surgery with less pain in the acute postoperative period and get them back to the things that they love to do. Whether that's working, whether that's spending time with your family or any other recreational activities that Patients want to get back into whether that's sports or just staying active throughout your life. So this is a really amazing technique in particular for spinal surgeries, such as decompressions and microdiscectomies, but it's also being utilized as well in some fusion surgeries.
I'm currently in the process of having this approved at our hospital. I'm hopeful in the next few months that that will be the case and that I can start employing this technique with my patients.
That's awesome to hear. And, you know, so it sounds like things are looking pretty good. Can you dive into sort of your sales pitch to the hospital to, you know, have them thinking about this?
Yeah, I think when we consider what goes into patients having spine surgery, there's a lot of things. There's not only from a hospital standpoint, considering things like length of stay, length of surgery, anesthesia, efficiency of surgery, OR time, staffing and things of that nature. Really doing these surgeries in less invasive manners allows us to be more efficient, to help more patients, and also consider doing things on more of an outpatient basis or ambulatory surgery. So it's really advantageous from a hospital standpoint and also from a patient standpoint.
What are Dr. Bratescu's top goals for endoscopic spine surgery?
And I think that's one of the greatest advantages of doing surgery this way.
Sounds like an absolute win-win. And what were some of your other goals besides this, if you say two more?
Sure. So I think the next one that I'm really excited about, which is also founded in in my training as a spine surgeon, having done both orthopedic and neurosurgical spine fellowships, is creating a comprehensive spine center at GW. And what that means is merging both the orthopedic and neurosurgery spine departments. I am fortunate that I have a great relationship with the neurosurgeons here, and this is really the future of spine surgery, especially at many large academic centers in the United States and around the world. employ this model. And what that really means is that you have orthopedic and neurosurgeons who are spine surgeons collaborating and working together instead of being two separate departments.
You're working under the same department, the Department of Spine Surgery, and a comprehensive spine center isn't just about the surgeons.
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