At NASS, Dynamic Stabilization Grabs Audiences

Arguably the biggest news at this year's North American Spine Society (NASS) meeting was made before the meeting even began. With impeccable and, many argued, intentional timing, the FDA finally approved Johnson & Johnson DePuy AcroMed Inc. 's Charite artificial disc replacement the day before the meeting opened, making Charite the first such device approved in the US, and the first of four that are expected soon to be battling it out in one of spine's most eagerly awaited new technology spaces. But hardly was the ink dry on the FDA's approval letter when all NASS seemed abuzz with the next big spine technology, dynamic stabilization.

Dynamic stabilization, sometimes also called flexible stabilization or soft stabilization, occupies a somewhat less certain space in the armamentarium of spine surgeons, in large part because it's so new. Defined primarily as an alternative to traditional fusion, it's also, to a degree, an alternative to disc replacement or arthroplasty. The tension between fusion and disc replacement—and the opportunity that disc replacement companies and their investors are counting on—is one between stability and motion. Fusion, widely performed but also widely disliked by surgeons and patients, deals with the problem of degenerative or damaged discs by stressing stability—but does so at the cost of significantly limiting patient motion at the fused vertebrae