NE HEALTH BUREAU
COIMBATORE, FEB 14
Coimbatore-based Ganga Hospital on Friday announced that a team of spine surgeons and radiologists from the hospital has won an award instituted by the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine (ISSLS) for its cutting-edge and it is also the sixth award from the ISSLS.
The research work -“Cartilage End Plate Defects Precede and Initiate Bony End Plate Defects and Disc Degeneration – An ’Integrated Total End Plate Score’ to Identify Preclinical Discs at Risk for Degeneration” – won the award for Best International Spine Research for the year 2025, which carries prize money of $20,000.
- The research work titled “Cartilage End Plate Defects Precede and Initiate Bony End Plate Defects and Disc Degeneration – An ’Integrated Total End Plate Score’ to Identify Preclinical Discs at Risk for Degeneration” won the prestigious award
- The paper will also be presented in a plenary session during the Annual Meeting of ISSLS in Atlanta, USA from May 12-16, 2025
- The study was performed by the group comprising Dr S Rajasekaran, Dr BT Pushpa, Dr Gnanaprakash Gurusamy, Dr Karthik Ramachandran, Dr TA Yirdaw, Dr S Basu, Dr JS Kamodia, Dr AM Abdelwahed, Dr SV Anand, Dr Ajoy Prasad Shetty and Dr Rishi M Kanna
“The selection is by a top-level international committee headed by Prof Helena Brisby, Gothenburg University, Sweden. The study will be published as a lead scientific article in the European Spine Journal. The paper will also be presented in a plenary session during the Annual Meeting of ISSLS in Atlanta, USA from May 12-16, 2025 where more than 2,500 spine surgeons and spine researchers from all international societies will come together for the meeting. The study was performed by the group – Dr S Rajasekaran, Dr BT Pushpa, Dr Gnanaprakash Gurusamy, Dr Karthik Ramachandran, Dr TA Yirdaw, Dr S Basu, Dr JS Kamodia, Dr AM Abdelwahed, Dr SV Anand, Dr Ajoy Prasad Shetty and Dr Rishi M Kanna,” a hospital release said.
This research work utilizes FLASH sequence to identify the status and severity of damage of the cartilage end plate. An ‘Integrated Total End Plate Score’ was developed to identify the changes in cartilage and bony end plates. The highlight of the study was that it showed cartilage end plate defects to occur much before the changes in the bony end plate or changes in Pfirmann grade of degeneration. This allowed us to identify the discs which are undergoing degeneration at the molecular level but still appearing normal in MRI. These discs may be the right cohort for regenerative therapy.
World record
The Spine Unit of Ganga Hospital has placed Coimbatore in the world map of spine research, having won many national and international awards. They also created world record by winning the prestigious ISSLS award five times previously, in the years 2004, 2010, 2013, 2017 and 2022. The research team previously created another record by winning the prestigious North American Spine Society outstanding research award continuously for four years (2019 to 2022) which has not been done before. They have also been the proud recipient of the Asia Pacific Spine Research Award multiple times; the European Spine Outstanding Research award and the British Spine award previously in addition to the numerous national awards by the Medical Council of India.
