Dr. Ferran Pellisé receives the Hibbs Award for research on spinal deviations

The Scoliosis Research Society (SRS), a leading medical society in best practices and research in spinal deviations, has awarded with the prestigious Hibbs Award the international research team which Dr. Ferran Pellisé, head of the Spine Unit of the Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology Service of Vall d'Hebron University Hospital and head of the Spine Research Unit of Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), is member. The award-winning study, "Adverse Events in Multilevel Surgery in Elderly Patients with Spinal Deformity: Report of the Prospective Evaluation of Elderly Deformity Surgery (PEEDS)" is the result of research carried out among more than 200 patients from 12 hospitals, and has dealt with the similarity of the adverse effects of surgery in elderly patients and in the adult population in general, with spinal deformity.

The Hibbs Award, created in honor of Russell A. Hibbs, a pioneer in scoliosis surgery, is given annually to the best research paper in this specialty. Nominees are selected by a committee and by attendees at the annual SRS meeting, which brings together top scoliosis specialists from around the world. The research in which Dr. Pellisé participates was chosen from among more than 140 papers presented at the last annual meeting held this year in St. Louis (USA). This is the second time Dr. Pellisé has received this award, which he won in 2013. Last year he was a finalist.

The Scoliosis Research Society (SRS), founded in 1966 in Wisconsin (USA), was created with the aim of concentrating specifically on the study of scoliosis and its surgery, considered to be of the utmost complexity. The society, which originally brought together mainly North American specialists, gradually broadened its scope to include doctors from other parts of the world until it has achieved a global personality in the last 20 years. The spirit of this medical society is to ensure the excellence and experience of all its members, so the admission process lasts 3 years, in which it is required to perform a significant volume of interventions which results and possible complications must be reported before being admitted. The result of this selective process is that the society brings together the most expert specialists in the world.

Dr. Pellisé has been an active member for 12 years; in 2018 he was invited to join the Board of Directors as an advisor (Director at Large) and in 2020 he was appointed Secretary of the organization. He is the first non-North American specialist to reach this position.

Dr. Pellisé's scientific production has more than 150 indexed publications, having participated in a multitude of national and international research projects.