2024 Spine Deformity eCourse
Registration Information
Registration Opens: May 6, 2024
Course Opens: May 31, 2024 (self-paced)
Registration Closes: July 31, 2024
Course Closes: July 31, 2024 (no extensions allowed)
Course Pricing:
AACPDM Members: $99
SRS Members: $99
Non-AACPDM Members: $199
Course Information
Presentation Title:
"Spine Deformity in Cerebral Palsy: A Comprehensive Approach eCourse"
Course Description:
This eCourse takes a multidisciplinary and multispecialty approach to evaluating, treating, and recovering from scoliosis. Targeted specifically to those treating children and young adults with cerebral palsy, experts from orthopaedic surgery, neurosurgery, pulmonology, comprehensive pediatrics, anesthesiology, physical medicine, and rehab will discuss their role in managing the care around the time of scoliosis surgery. This course is rounded out with a discussion about the lived experience with Benjamin Shrader, who underwent a posterior spinal fusion for scoliosis as a child.
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion of this presentation, participants will be able to:
- Discuss the care of patients with cerebral palsy as they are evaluated and treated for neuromuscular scoliosis from a multidisciplinary perspective;
- Outline perioperative techniques that improve safety and outcomes for children with cerebral palsy undergoing treatment of neuromuscular scoliosis;
- Discuss the pathophysiology and clinical/radiological surveillance of scoliosis for patients with cerebral palsy, with attention to the role of non-operative treatments; and
- Discuss the impact of scoliosis surgery on patients with cerebral palsy, including effects on quality of life, hip displacement, and aspects relating to adulthood.
Speaker Information:
Jason Howard B. Eng., MD, FRCSC
Dr. Howard is a board certified academic Pediatric Orthopedic Surgeon at Nemours Children’s Hospital–Alfred I. duPont Campus in Wilmington, Delaware. He completed his medical training in Canada at Memorial University in 1998 and residency training in Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Calgary in 2003. His Fellowship training in Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery was at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, followed by a Fellowship in Pediatric Spine Surgery at Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. He became a member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 2003. In 2017, Dr. Howard completed a sabbatical at Inselspital, Bern, Switzerland where he trained in Pediatric Hip Preservation. In addition to his medical training, Dr. Howard also holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering (Memorial) and graduate studies in Biodesign at Stanford University. Dr. Howard is an active member of numerous societies including Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA), American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine (AACPDM), Australian Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine (AusACPDM), European Academy of Childhood Disability (EACD), Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), the Hip Hope Network, and the Canadian Orthopaedic Association (COA). His clinical interests include cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophies, spinal muscular atrophy, peripheral neuropathies, and other neuromuscular conditions (including spine). His research interests are focused on muscle basic science and epidemiological studies in cerebral palsy and other neuromuscular disorders, specifically spinal muscular atrophy.
Christina Hardesty MD
Dr. Chris Hardesty is a Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgeon at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, and Associate Professor of Orthopaedics and Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She is the Program Director for the Orthopaedic Surgery residency at Case Western.
Dr. Hardesty received her M.D. from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, AR. She completed her residency in Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and also completed two fellowships in Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery and Neuromuscular Orthopaedics at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, OH and Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, DE.
Dr. Hardesty’s specialties include Scoliosis and Spinal Deformities, Cerebral Palsy, Neuromuscular Disorders, Spasticity Management, and pediatric orthopaedic trauma. She is a member of numerous organizations including the Scoliosis Research Society, the Pediatric Spine Study Group, POSNA, and AACPDM. She also leads the national multicenter pediatric baclofen pump database and study group. Her research interests and publications are primarily related to pediatric spinal deformity and spasticity management.
In her spare time, Dr. Hardesty is also a private pilot and chases around her two young sons.
Freeman Miller MD
Dr Miller was Co-director of the Cerebral Palsy Program and the Clinical Director of the Gait Analysis Laboratory at the A.I. duPont Hospital for Children for 30 years. His clinical practice of pediatric orthopedics is limited to children with cerebral palsy. Reseach interests include investigation of surgical outcomes of CP surgery through gait analysis; mathematical modeling of the hip joint in children with CP, hip monitoring and management for children with CP, and management of spinal deformity in CP. Dr. Miller has published more than 200 articles in peer reviewed journals, has published a book Cerebral Palsy: A Guide for Caregiving directed at families and is now in the 3rd edition. A medical textbook, Cerebral Palsy outlining musculoskeletal care of the child with cerebral palsy was published originally in 2005 by Springer-Verlag and the 2nd edition was published in 2020. He has been invited to give lectures in more then 40 different countries.
Suken Shah MD
In addition to my work as a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, Division Chief of the Nemours Spine and Scoliosis Center, and the Shands/MacEwen Endowed Chair of Orthopaedic Surgery at Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware, I help educate the next generation of orthopedic physicians. I am the Clinical Fellowship Director for the orthopedics department at Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware. I train residents, fellows and visiting observers in advanced spinal deformity techniques. I’m also an associate professor of orthopedic surgery and pediatrics at Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, and frequently teach and lecture at national and international courses, educational symposia, conferences and other institutions. I have also served on the board of the Scoliosis Research Society and Setting Scoliosis Straight Foundation, and am a member of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America. In addition, I have authored more than 100 research articles and 25 book chapters, and serve as a reviewer of four journals.
Ron El-Hawary MD, MSc, FRCS(C)
Dr. El-Hawary is Professor, Department of Surgery with cross-appointments with the School of Biomedical Engineering and with the Division of Neurosurgery at Dalhousie. He also serves as Associate Chief of Surgery, Research Director of Surgery, and Chief of Orthopaedics at IWK Health.
Ron is currently on the Board of Directors of the Scoliosis Research Society and of the Pediatric Spine Foundation. He has been Chair of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Orthopaedic Examination Committee and has been President of the Pediatric Spine Foundation, the Canadian Pediatric Orthopaedic Group, and was the founding president of the Canadian Pediatric Spine Society. Ron enjoys spending time with his family at their cottage, skiing, playing golf, and coaching basketball.
Amit Jain MD
Amit Jain, MD MBA is an Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Neurosurgery, and Chief of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Jain received B.S. in Bioengineering with High Honors at UC Berkeley. He went to Johns Hopkins for medical school, where he was Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. He did his Orthopaedic Surgery residency at Hopkins, receiving the Miller-Coulson Award for Clinical Excellence and the Byank Award for Servant Leadership. He then pursued fellowship in Spinal Surgery at Emory University. To further his interest in health economics and care delivery, he pursued an MBA from the Carey Business School. Dr. Jain’s surgical practice focuses on children with scoliosis and adults with degenerative spinal pathology. His research focuses on improving outcomes, safety, and value in spine surgery. He has over 250 publications, and is Principal Investigator on a NIH R01 grant. He is a leader in the AO Spine KF Degenerative, and a member of the Harms Study Group. He serves as the Director of Value Based Care for the Johns Hopkins Health System.
Laura Owens MD
Laura Owens, MD is a pediatric physical medicine and rehabilitation physician at Nemours A.I. duPont in Wilmington, Delaware. She is focused on the care of children and adolescents with disabilities, including cerebral palsy, acquired brain injury, and other neuromuscular diseases. She received her MD from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, did her residency at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in pediatrics and physiatry, and has been at Nemours for the last 10 years. She notes, “Physical medicine and rehabilitation is a way to help children with neuromuscular conditions reach the highest function that they can. I find my patients fun to work with, I love watching them grow, and I enjoy getting to know them and their families. The kids I treat inspire me with their resilience.”
Firoz Miyanji MD, FRCS(C)
Dr. Miyanji is a Clinical Professor at the University of British Columbia, Department of Orthopedics whose clinical practice focuses on pediatric spinal deformity at British Columbia Children’s Hospital. Dr. Miyanji completed a combined Orthopedic and Neurosurgical adult spine fellowship at the Toronto Western Krembil Neurosciences Center followed by an additional fellowship in Pediatric Orthopedics and Scoliosis at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. More recently he completed a Global Executive MBA in Healthcare and Life Sciences at the University of Toronto’s Rotman Institute of Business.
Dr. Miyanji’s research interests include clinical outcomes research, health care policy, and innovative therapies in pediatric spinal disorders. He has been the recipient of a number of national and international awards including the prestigious St. Giles Young Investigator award from POSNA, the Hibbs and Whitecloud awards of the SRS, the R.W. McGraw Lectureship from UBC, and the SRS Travelling Fellowship.
He was past Chair of the Research Committee for POSNA, Program Chair for SRS, Chair of the Quality and Safety Committee of SRS, and recently served as the Spine SME for IPOS. Currently he is the Pediatric Spine Fellowship Director and is Chair of the Faculty Promotions Committee for UBC, Department of Orthopedics. He serves on the Advisory Board for the AO Fracture, Tumour, Deformity Expert Group. He previously served on the Board for POSNA and is currently a Board member for the SRS. Dr. Miyanji recently joined the leadership team and Executive Committee of the Harms Study Group as Vice President of Research. He is also a mentor for the newly launched L.E.A.D. program of the SRS.
Benjamin Shrader BA
Benjamin W. Shrader is a self-advocate, activist, public speaker, occasional film critic, and rolling Star Wars encyclopedia. Born with cerebral palsy (CP), Benjamin believes in redefining independence. He wants to help create a world that views the word, not merely as a means to achieve self-sufficiency, but as a way of unlocking one’s best self through a sense of community and shared responsibility. A triplet born at 28 weeks, Benjamin navigates the world with a power wheelchair. He graduated magna cum laude from Belhaven University with a degree in Theatre (Dramatic Writing) and a minor in Political Science. He puts those skills to use educating children about CP, through educational opportunities made possible in conjunction with his mother. Benjamin also enjoys public speaking and has had opportunities at the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine’s annual meeting, the Delaware LIFE Conference, and more.
Jay Berry MD, MPH
Jay G. Berry, M.D., M.P.H., is the inaugural Chief of Complex Care in the Division of General Pediatrics and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. A general pediatrician and hospitalist, Berry's clinical, quality improvement initiatives, health services research, and policy work have focused on optimizing health outcomes for children with medical complexity through proactive care planning, integrated health information management, and co-management with medical and surgical specialists. He is Co-Director of the Children’s Hospital Association Health Services Research Academy and the Executive Director of the Maternal and Child Health’s Children with Special Healthcare Needs Research Network.
Dr. Berry has had 16 years of continuous federal research funding (NICHD, AHRQ, MCHB, NHLBI, and European Commission), which has contributed to over 200 publications, book chapters, and reports. He serves on the editorial boards of JAMA Pediatrics and Academic Pediatrics. His work has been published in JAMA, BMJ, PLoS Medicine, and Health Affairs, and has been awarded by the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, AcademyHealth, and Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He has testified before U.S. Congress on children with medical complexity and helped write and pass state and federal legislation on Medicaid payment reform for these children.
Wade Shrader MD
Dr. Wade Shrader is The Freeman Miller Endowed Chair of Cerebral Palsy at Nemours Children’s Health - Wilmington, Delaware, where he focuses his practice on the treatment of children with cerebral palsy and similar developmental disabilities. He is also a Professor of Orthopedic Surgery and Pediatrics at Thomas Jefferson University.
His undergraduate degree was in aerospace engineering from Mississippi State University, and he worked as a flight engineer at NASA before entering medical school. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed his residency in orthopedic surgery at the Mayo Clinic and his fellowship in pediatric orthopedics and scoliosis at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas, Texas. He has served as the Division Chief of Pediatric Orthopedics at Phoenix Children’s Hospital and Children’s of Mississippi, where he was also the Director of Pediatric Rehabilitation.
Dr. Shrader has served on multiple committees in POSNA, SRS, and AAOS. He is currently the Deputy Editor for Pediatrics for the Journal of the AAOS and is the Deputy Editor for Neuromuscular for JPOSNA. He also serves on the National Advisory Board for Medical Rehabilitative Research for NIH NICHD. He has served the community on the Board of Directors of Family Voices of Mississippi and Raising Special Kids in Arizona.
Wade is currently on the Board of Directors and the President of The American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine. He and his wife are the proud parents of four children, two of whom have cerebral palsy.
Katy Osevitz MD
Dr. Ovsevitz, MD, MPH, is a graduate of the University of Arizona College of Medicine. She received a master’s degree from the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health with an emphasis on epidemiology. Dr. Ovsevitz completed a residency in anesthesiology at the University of Illinois as well as a pediatric anesthesiology fellowship. She is board-certified in anesthesiology and pediatric anesthesiology and currently cares for adult and pediatric patients at the University of Illinois Chicago and Shriners Children’s Chicago.
Adil Soaliman MD
Dr. Solaiman attended medical school at the Penn State College of Medicine. He completed his pediatric residency and chief resident year at the Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital. He is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, and works clinically as a pediatric hospitalist at the Nemours Children’s Hospital in Wilmington, Delaware. He is part of the Medically Complex Patients pediatric consult team, where he provides preoperative and posteroperative medical care to medically complex patients receiving orthopedic care at Nemours.
Greg Redding MD
Gregory Rdding MD, Professor for Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle Washington. Dr. Redding is a board certified pediatric pulmonologist since 1986 who created the Division of Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine at Seattle Children’s Hospital in 1992, and was the Pulmonary Fellowship director (20 years). He has served in leadership positions in many organizations, participated on editorial boards (including Spine Deformity), and published more than 200 papers, reviews and chapters.He directs the Maternal Child Health Bureau-funded Pediatric Pulmonary Center which focuses on systems of care for children with special respiratory health care needs. .He is a senior member of the internatinoal Pediatric Spine Study Group and conducts clinical research on spine and thoracic cage deformities in young children and their impact on breathing and sleeping.
Shenandoah Robinson MD
Dr. Shenandoah "Dody" Robinson is a nationally recognized expert in the treatment of pediatric epilepsy and spasticity. Her research focuses on clarifying how early insults to the developing brain lead to deficits, such as cerebral palsy and epilepsy, and how to mitigate these deficits with neurorestorative agents. Currently she is the president of the American Academy of Neurological Surgery.
Dr. Robinson sees patients at the Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center’s Neurosciences Clinic, the Kennedy Krieger Institute and the Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital.
As a prolific researcher and award-winning teacher, she has written dozens of peer-reviewed professional journal articles and more than 15 book chapters, and she has mentored numerous pediatric neurosurgery trainees.
Dr. Robinson has been elected to the Executive Council of the American Society of Pediatric Surgeons (ASPN), the most distinguished pediatric neurosurgical society in the nation. She is the first woman to hold this position in the 42 year history of the society and she is in the line-up to become its president. She currently serves as a Director of the American Board of Pediatric Neurosurgery and just stepped down as chief of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics.
CME/CEU Information
CME/CEU will be available through the course's platform (Blue Sky).
Accreditation Statement
In support of improving patient care, this activity has been planned and implemented by Amedco LLC and American Academy for Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine. Amedco LLC is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team. Amedco Joint Accreditation #4008163.
Physicians (ACCME) Credit Designation
Amedco LLC designates this enduring activity for a maximum of 2.00 AMA PRA Category 1 CreditsTM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Individual Cancellation Policy:
Cancellation Policy:
All requests for cancellation must be received in writing by May 30, 2024. A 75% refund will be granted for requests received before this date. No refunds will be granted after May 30, 2024. All refunds will be processed after the ecourse takes place.
Provider Cancellation Policy:
Cancellation of the eCourse by the AACPDM will result in all pre-registered attendees receiving a 100% refund.