Awards ceremony

Keito Ito, Chairman of the AOSpine Research Commission served as chairman of the Awards Committee with Teija Lund, Kenneth Cheung, Emiliano Vialle, Joseph Cheng and Zayed Al-Zayed serving as committee members.

The committee selected the Best Clinical Paper from the top 10 abstracts that were submitted for podium presentation. The Best Poster was selected from the top 10 poster abstracts.

The abstracts were graded based on the following criteria:

• Originality of Work
• Scientific Merit
• Quality of the abstract (clarity)
• Importance of the results

Eugene Carragee, MD, Stanford University was the recipient of Best Clinical Paper Award for his presentation of “Does discography cause accelerated progression of degeneration changes in the lumbar disc: a ten year matched control study”.

Dino Samartzis, MD, University of Hong Kong was the winner of the Best Poster Award for his poster entitled: “Juvenile disc degeneration of the lumbar spine: prevalence, risk factors, & clinical relevance”.