In the fourth week of September, a new group of faculty and fellows gathered at Schloss Arenberg to participate in the Weill Cornell Seminar in Neurosurgery. Dr. Roger Haertl, a twelve-year veteran of the OMI spinal surgery seminars and the Director of Spinal Surgery at the Weill Cornell Brain and Spine Center in New York (USA) and Dr. Claudius Thomé, Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at the Medical University of Innsbruck (Austria), directed the seminar. The fellows, a group of 15 spinal surgeons selected from a pool of nearly 130 applicants, hailed from seven countries including Austria, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia.
13 faculty members from Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the United States provided the fellows with the most up-to-date information and techniques in the field of neurosurgery through lectures, workshops, hands-on laboratory instructions, and discussions spurred by fellows‘ case presentations.
The purpose of the spinal surgery seminar is to impart clinical knowledge and new surgical techniques, which fellows take back to their home countries and implement. The week’s highlight was the hands-on training session organized by the OMI with major support from Medtronic and Zeiss at Paracelsus Medical University. The lab provided stations for percutaneous procedures, cervical screw insertion, lumbar screw insertion, and a demonstration of Medtronic’s O-arm 3D scanner, which provides valuable imaging for spinal navigation, enhanced 3D visibility and surgical feedback. The lab allows the OMI fellows to put what they have learned during the lectures into practice, which is often a life changing experience for a young neurosurgeon!
Click here to visit the OMI E-Learning Platform. It gives the OMI alumni free access to the content of the OMI seminars in Salzburg.
