A Jamaican orthopaedic surgeon has patented and created an artificial disc that can be used to replace damaged and diseased discs. Dr. Kingsley Chin performed surgery on a patient at Andrews Memorial Hospital in St. Andrews, Jamaica, using in the procedure the cervical artificial disc he had created. Named “Freedom Cervical Disc” and made from viscoelastic polymer, the product is used for spinal surgery in the neck area. The artificial disc is said to be similar to a natural disc and the design and materials would withstand wear and use for decades.
Most people are aware that there are replacement artificial joints for the hip, shoulder and knee, but they are probably less aware of the possibility of disc replacement. However, artificial disc replacement (ADR) was performed in Europe for decades before it was tried in the United States. Total disc replacement was available in Germany in 1982, but it only became available in the United States in 2000. In fact, many persons had to go to Germany to get ADR treatment. So it is not an experimental treatment and the implants have apparently proven to be reliable.
According to Ryan Dueck, founder of Six Degrees Freedom website, research up to 2012 shows that “nobody has managed to blow out or ‘herniate’ an artificial disc.” Dueck himself sustained a neck injury from football and had his ADR surgery in Germany. Back pain is a common enough complaint among athletes and sportsmen, workers who do a lot of lifting and anyone really in the general population. Famous athletes such as Tiger Woods and Jason Day in golf, Peyton Manning in American football have had trouble with back injuries. For some, the pain is persistent. Sometimes, the cause is damage or disease of the discs between the vertebrae or bones of the spine as the damaged discs can also cause damage to the nerves in the area.
Dr. Chin’s artificial disc and other artificial discs surgery can bring relief to those whose condition might require surgery. It could, however, be one route towards the treatment of spinal pain. Jamaicans will no doubt be proud of their native son and his achievements. The story of Dr. Chin’s achievement is interesting on several levels: He is a doctor and he created a medical device. It is a fitting combination for, as an orthopaedic surgeon, his surgical experiences give him first-hand knowledge of the composition of discs and spine. From that knowledge, he can seek to create a product that closely approximates to the natural disc in an effort to bring relief to patients.
Dr. Chin is more than an inventor, innovator and surgeon for he is also an entrepreneur. He owns the product he created choosing not to sell his invention to a medical technology firm, for instance, but opting instead to create his own company AxioMed. He was striving for independence and for control of his own product and intellectual property. Dr. Chin’s story has some teaching moments. The origin of the journey to higher education started with a football scholarship. The emphasis was on education initially as he made his way through several academic degrees, finally studying medicine at Harvard Medical School.
We observe his persistence towards reaching his goal as he did not land in medical school immediately. We pause to observe that someone could combine education and experience with entrepreneurship to achieve success. Sometimes the perception is that you have to choose one or the other. Looking at Dr. Chin’s achievements, it is possible that his earlier degrees in Mathematics and in Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering could have contributed to his creation of a product. He is in fact like a medical engineer and we can add to that the fact that he is a businessman.
One famous patient of Dr. Chin is fellow Jamaican Chris Gayle, the West Indies cricket star batsman. Gayle had been suffering from back problems for at least a year before his search for treatment eventually led him through several referrals to Dr. Chin. What we learn from Gayle’s treatment is that the Jamaican orthopaedic surgeon is also a creator of innovative medical procedure. On Gayle, Dr. Chin used the Less Exposure Surgery technique which is described as “utilizing the least invasive techniques and technologies to achieve the quickest and best outcomes.”
Dr Chin is the founder of LESS Institute which, according to the founder, “is an academic centre of excellence which provides outpatient treatment for spine and orthopaedics. LESS Institute’s mission is to tailor treatment to each patient, to pinpoint the problem, fix it and let the patient go home the same day to recover quickly.” There is more. In addition to all this, Dr. Chin is also the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SpineFrontier Inc., a company that designs and develops medical devices and implants for use in spine surgery using the LES techniques. The doctor is multifaceted as surgeon, innovator and businessman. He is certainly an asset to Jamaica for his impact and contribution to medicine and as an example to young Jamaicans and other youths in the region as well.
While some focus has been placed on the possibility for medical tourism, there is also the comfort that patient care for foreign and local patients alike will improve at least in some areas. But the opportunity for medical tourism should be assessed. As the story of Dr. Chin shows, medicine and business can co-exist. At one point, persons had to travel to Germany in order to be able to get disc replacement treatment. Currently, too, the United States only approves one level disc replacement so persons who may need more than one disc replaced would have to travel to countries that have approved multi-level replacement.
Once again, Europe as expected is further ahead in this regard. Ryan Dueck, for instance, had a four-level replacement surgery in Germany. This means then that the surgery performed in Jamaica by Dr. Chin that was a four level replacement would not have been possible in the United States. That points to the possibility of medical tourism in relation to that procedure. At this point in time, with pessimistic predictions for the upcoming tourist season, some diversification and addition to the tourism product is needed. The news of Dr. Chin who performed his ground breaking surgery in Jamaica is an illuminating ray, especially amidst the problems of nurses being poached and other weaknesses in the health sector there. He may well provide further opportunities for both health and tourism in Jamaica.
Contributed by Terry Nisbett
