Alexander Tuchman, M.D., a spine neurosurgeon specializing in adult spinal deformities, is the new co-director of the Cedars-Sinai Spine Center. He joins center co-leader David Skaggs, M.D., executive vice chair of orthopaedics at Cedars-Sinai and director of Pediatric Orthopaedics for Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s.
“Since its inception, the Cedars-Sinai Spine Center has been a combined Neurosurgery and Orthopedic program, with co-directors from both specialties,” Dr. Tuchman told OTW. “We were delighted to recruit Dave Skaggs to be the co-director a few years ago. There was also a search for a neurosurgical co-director which included several external candidates. I was honored to be offered the other co-director position earlier this year.
“I am excited to have Dr. Tuchman as a partner in elevating and building the Cedars-Sinai Spine Center,” Dr. Skaggs said. “I have enjoyed partnering with Dr. Tuchman in research, educating the next generation of spine surgeons, and in the operating room. It takes a comprehensive team including both neurosurgical and orthopedic spine expertise to build on our foundation of leading-edge research while at the same time providing the highest-quality clinical care.”
Dr. Tuchman attended medical school at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and completed his neurosurgery fellowship at the University of Southern California. Before joining Cedars-Sinai in 2018, Tuchman also completed a spine deformity fellowship at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.
According to Dr. Tuchman, the biggest challenge for a spine surgeon as well as the patient, is determining whether surgery is the right path or not. “The spine is the center connection point for your extremities and brain, and anytime there’s a structural issue, it can cause devastating consequences,” explained Dr. Tuchman. “With reconstructive spine surgery, we can often restore function and relieve pain, taking someone who is basically homebound, or even bedridden, and getting them back out into the world.”
“One of the biggest challenges for a spine surgeon is determining whether we can genuinely help,” Tuchman said. “If a patient’s spine problem is not going to respond well to spine surgery, then that person shouldn’t have spine surgery, and if a spinal malalignment isn’t affecting the patient’s quality of life, perhaps it does not need to be treated.”
As the new co-director of Cedars Sinai Spine, with more than 30 spine surgeons and associated staff serving a global patient population from Los Angeles, Dr. Tuchman told OTW, “The most important part of the job is empowering the Cedar’s spine surgeons and their teams to provide extraordinary care for our patients. This includes making sure our OR resources are being used fairly and efficiently, we have access to the most impactful enabling technologies, and our subspecialty programs in tumor, MIS, and adult and pediatric deformity are being adequately supported. Our priorities are providing the highest quality care for each individual patient and being of service to the community by providing the quaternary care that the most challenging clinical scenarios often require.”
Finally, said Dr. Tuchman, the research focus of Cedars Sinai’s is on risk factors for complications, readmissions, and reoperations following spine surgeries.
“We leverage both our large institutional clinical volume and administrative datasets to answer these research questions. Two recent projects compared single level anterior cervical discectomy and fusion vs. cervical disc arthroplasty and single-level anterior vs posterior interbody lumbar fusions. In matched cohorts of patients receiving these surgeries, interestingly both studies found no difference in reoperations between these disparate approaches. Findings like these highlight that clinical outcomes often involve many factors beyond surgical technique.”
