research question

[iwantneurosurg]

Comically, the name that I have chosen is misleading from inherent naivete from the getgo...

I want to do spine surgery, and naively chose neurosurgery as the path, when I recently found ortho plus fellowship a possible route as well.

Despite the competitiveness of getting a spine fellowship, tho many say that if you want one you'll get one, it seems that the overall orthopedics residency is a lot easier in terms of stress and personal life than a neurosurgery. Hence, I am conflicted, but it leads to the following question.

Currently, I am doing research on spine stuff with a Neurosurgeon who does almost solely spine cases. Most of the papers we publish together are joint with an Orthopedic-Spine surgeon.

I've talked to several neurosurgery residency admissions people, and they all say that getting a recommendation from neurosurgeons is vital, whereas this is not necessarily true for other fields.

So, if I choose in three years to go the ortho route instead of neuro, will doing spine research in neurosurgery hurt since its not from the department of orthopaedics? Also, would a letter of rec. from a spine-neurosurgeon carry weight in the world of ortho-matching?

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[moquito_17]

So it sounds like you are an M1 and are interested in being a spine surgeon. You have a few things to do between here and there--Step 1, etc. First things first...

As far as life during residency--that is a topic for another day. Neurosurgery residencies are 7 years and orthopaedic surgery residencies are five. The differences are innumerable. The residencies are very different.

Here is what I can say for orthopaedic surgery vs. neurosurgery spine. First, many neurosurgery residents graduate and do spine without a fellowship. This is rare among orthopaedic surgery graduates. Second, as a fellowship-trained orthopaedic spine surgeon, you will likely do more deformity and children's spine than a non-fellowship trained neurosurgeon—although this depends on what fellowship you do. The number of neurosurgeons that do complex deformity and pediatrics is small. Most of this is done by orthopaedic surgery-trained spine surgeons. But even among orthopaedics fellowships, not all spine fellowships are the same. Some do not have any peds and little deformity. There is a list and description of fellowships on NASS's webpage. You should look into this.

As far as application to orthopaedics residencies--you are better off with an orthopaedic spine surgeon recommendation vs. a neurosurgeon. Remember, academic orthopaedics is a small community and ortho spine is even smaller. The best thing about a recommendations is that the reader knows the writer. You are more likely to have your reader know your writer if they are both orthopaedic surgeons.

Hope this helps,