1064 Blurred Boundaries: The Prevalence of Interventional Spine Procedures Performed by Pain Management Physicians

INTRODUCTION: Interventional pain management (IPM) physicians are essential allies for spine surgeons in treating various spinal disorders. Although, some IPM physicians have received additional training, some of them are performing MIS spine procedures such as neural decompression and spinal fusions. Recently, there has been a blurring line between traditional spine surgery and interventional spine procedures. METHODS: We identified IPM-physicians through the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP) DoctorFinder. We evaluated each SCOPUS profile to determine their academic productivity, and we queried their physician websites to determine the incidence of offering MIS or open spinal procedures. We performed descriptive statistics, independent sample t-tests, and chi-squared analyses to identify potential associations and differences among IPM-physicians performing interventional spinal procedures. RESULTS: 325 providers were enlisted, after removing neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons, we included 269 providers in our analysis. The average age was 56.25 ± 9.60 years. 237 providers had an MD, 32 had a DO. Of these, four had an MS, 4 had a PhD. One hundred twenty-nine providers had research profiles built on SCOPUS, with an average publication count, h-index, and citation count of 24.11, 5.98, and 925.62, respectively. Among the included providers, 74 physicians (27.51%) were found to perform interventional spinal procedures: 35 (13.01%) performed MIS lumbar decompression (MILD procedure), 33 (12.27%) performed Superion or Vertiflex interspinous spacer insertion, 18 (6.69%) performed spinal fusion, 26 (9.67%) performed discectomies, 11 (4.09%) performed Minuteman interspinous-interlaminar fusion, 1 (0.37%) performed disc-replacement, and 14 (5.20%) performed other non-specified decompressive spinal procedures. CONCLUSIONS: With a high incidence of invasive spine procedures performed by IPM-physicians, future studies must analyze the current impact of these procedures and define the territory between traditional spine surgery interventions performed by surgeons and interventional pain spinal procedures.