Spine Health and Bone Metabolism Center

Our Center for Spine Health and Bone Metabolism focuses on understanding factors that contribute to poor spine and bone health and, in a multidisciplinary fashion, developing treatment strategies for mitigating bone degeneration and improving spine health and bone physiology in surgical and non-surgical spine patients. The multidisciplinary team is comprised of practitioners and specialists from across multiple disciplines outlined below. They work in an integrated fashion to identify spine patients at risk for osteoporosis or suboptimal spine health from a variety of clinical, physiological and metabolic factors.

Bone health may be assessed by performing a DEXA (Dual-Energy X-ray Absorptiometry) scan or a specialized CT scan to determine any variance from normal healthy individuals. The goal is to identify at-risk surgical and non-surgical spine patients and to institute a comprehensive, patient-specific treatment strategy before undergoing any surgical procedures and before the development of osteoporotic fractures. Such strategies may involve medication therapy, hormone replacement therapy, vitamin supplementation, lifestyle and dietary modulation amongst others.

Director

Multidisciplinary Team

Endocrinology

Geetha Gopalakrishnan, MD

Harikrashna Bhatt, MD

Vicky Chang, MD

Rheumatology
Spine Neurosurgery
Women’s Health
Physiatry
Radiology
Physical Therapy

• Osteoporosis
• Osteopenia
• Diabetes
• Smoking
• Obesity
• Low calcium
• Vitamin D deficiency