2019年度 Fellowship 訪問レポート
Name of Fellow: Koji Ishikawa
Spine Center: Spine Education and Research Foundation, Denver, USA
Spine Center Director: Michael JanssenDuration: 8 weeks

I am Koji Ishikawa from Showa University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan. It was
my great honour to grant the AO Spine fellowship at the Scientific Education andResearch Foundation (SERI) & The Center for Spine and Orthopedics, Denver,Colorado, USA. My stay in Denver, Colorado was definitely satisfying! First, I would
like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the staffs related to this fellowship. All thestaffs of SERI were very kind and they were willing to help me all the time including mydaily life.
Dr. Michael Janssen, who is my supervisor, is an outstanding spine surgeon as a ExAO Spine Chairman. At the same time he was sportsman beyond my imagination andhe has won the world champion of powerboat several time. I also had a chance to learn
medicine from Dr. Joseph Morreale who is a co-supervisor and Dr. Christiana
Ottomeyer who is a spine fellow. Dr. Morreale was a great spine surgeon in that hisfast, safe and accuracy to the operation. I have scrubbed in operations many times
with Dr. Ottomeyer and could learned together. She was a beautiful spine surgeon withpromising career. I enjoyed spending time discussing many cases with her.
During my stay in Colorado, I study a lot of things besides surgery technique. This
fellowship program taught me not only the operative techniques but also thedifferences in medical systems between USA and that of Japan. Thus, I can grasp how
to care the patients under USA medical insurance including clinic appointment, surgery,perioperative management and the follow up after they are discharged. I was surprised
to see when the patient was discharged immediately after surgery (A patient whoperformed cervical disc replacement and was discharged a day after surgery! [Note:she went back to Wisconsin by airplane]). There were variety of surgeries in Denver
including spinal fusion, total disc replacement, decompression surgery, spinal cord
stimulator, etc. The surgery of total disc replacement, ALIF, SI joint fusion was very
impressive to me. Even though I was not familiar with these surgeries, Dr. Janssenand Dr. Morreale gave me instructions about the detail of operation in every case, andthanks to their advices, I could understand about the surgery very well. I also enjoyedthe clinics, discussions, journal club, physician’s meeting, lecture by Dr. Janssen atinternational spine meeting. Furthermore, Dr. Janssen was very nice and he invitedme the trip to Missouri, Wyoming, and Nevada (attend the meeting). It was very
memorable, and it impressed me all the time.
In daily life, I would like to thank everyone for the support to my family for the wonderfultime in Denver. It couldn’t be better without their support. I am glad that our family could
cerebrate my son’s birthday party at Denver with my neighbourhood. The thanksgiving
party invited by Dr. Morreale was one of my best memory for my family.
Finally, I cannot find the words to express my gratitude to everyone including the staffsof SERI (special thanks to Dr. Janssen), to AO Spine (special thanks to Adele Chan)and to my family. I realize how blessed my career has been to make relationship withan awesome place. Thank you so much and keep in touch! I can’t wait to meet
everyone in Global Spine Congress near future.