Many people suffer from different types of illnesses that are directly or indirectly related to the body’s spinal cord. Spinal injury can be caused by aging, improper body mechanics, trauma, and structural abnormalities. This can cause back pain, numbness and weakness in lower extremities. A spinal cord injury (SCI) affects a person’s sensory abilities, their motor abilities, or both, making daily life activities difficult.
Although this type of traumatic injury is somewhat rare, there are still hundreds of thousands of people who live with spinal cord injuries and thousands more who are diagnosed and affected every year. As per World Health Organisation (WHO), between 250,000 and 500,000 new spinal cord injuries occur each year globally. More than 90% of all SCIs are the outcome of a physical accident such as fall, motorcycle crash or an act of violence.
Most of the times, the apt way to get the spine in working condition again is to undergo a spine fusion treatment. In order to achieve a successful spinal cord fusion, it is best to use disposable spinal instruments. With the advent of disposable spinal instruments in recent years, spine surgeries have become more accessible, efficient, and minimally invasive.
Single-use instruments are used for these procedures as they do not require any sterilisation procedure, which reduces the cost associated with autoclaving. Future Market Insights reported that the overall demand for disposable spinal instruments will grow at a CAGR of 8.3% between 2022 and 2032, totalling a valuation of US$ 98.5 Mn by 2032. As there is a lower risk of infection and cross-infection with disposable spinal instruments, they are considered to be a better alternative over reusable ones.
Spinal surgeries to spur with growing geriatric population
In terms of age, the world’s population is getting old. According to United Nations, by 2050, globally over 2 billion people will be aged 65 and above, which is equivalent to one in six people. There were about 970 million people in this age group in 2017. They are at high risk of spinal cord injury and require spinal instruments for it.
With the aging population, degenerative spinal conditions like degenerative spinal stenosis and degenerative disc disorders will also become more prevalent. Some of these patients suffer from debilitating persistent pain and functional disability despite medication, physical therapy, and epidural steroid injections being used to treat them. The appropriate surgical treatment should be considered for these patients, with a great deal of caution. Thus, to avoid any kind of viral or bacterial infection in these patients during spinal surgery, doctors strictly adhere to using disposable spinal instruments.
It is common for orthopaedic oncologists to encounter patients with minor bone lesions difficult to access surgically. These patients require large exposures that are out of proportion to the severity of the disease and have a significant negative impact on the patient.
For such cases, minimally invasive surgical techniques provide the advantage of smaller incisions, shorter operative times