Top 5 Spine Fellowships

I agree with your position that a few of the unaccredited programs are remaining unaccredited for a reason & that reason is money. We all know which programs those are, despite disagreeing on one in particular. However, the programs that we don't know about or are not as well known to staff in our programs, which is the basis for most of my opinions, have no gold standard to which they are compared. The lesser known programs who have been accredited should be held in higher esteem than a small name program that no one has strong opinions about. When subspecialization exams become a reality for spine, these programs will have to step up to the plate, but until the exams are looming on the immedite horizon, they will not change from their current course, because this will mean less income, & nobody wants that. I chose my program based on the quality of training and it happened to be an accredited program. I am not suggesting that anyone is foolish to train in a place that has not been accredited, but that it may be an issue for you in the future. I do not know which 13 programs are accredited, but while I was at an AOA-RLF meeting recently, that was the number that was quoted by Chris Harner from Pittsburgh.
Regarding Louisville's training, I went to medical school there and My spine attendings are well acquaited with the program. They have a strange setup where neurosurgery does decompressions and the ortho guys come in to do instrumentation and the cervical training is not that great. Some of the attendings there are among the best, but there are others that are among the worst. I was told not to consider them as an option when I was maiking out my list of programs that I planned to investigate. I think that if you are interested in an academic program that is busy and will make you comfortable anywhere around the spine, there are plenty of other places, some of which are overlooked every year, i.e. U of Washington in Seattle - Jens Chapman, Utah - Darrell Brodke, Louisville(different program) - Dick Holt, Pittsburgh - Donaldson & Kang, etc, etc, etc.
Did not apply to Baylor or HSS, so I do not have any info.
These are just my opinions and I am not touting them as being written in stone, but I read this forum last year when I went through the application process. I used what seemed like the least biased to generate a list of programs that interested me and found a program that I liked. If you are going throught the same process, I would advise you to take everyone's opinions with a grain of salt and form your own based on whatever facts you can find, albeit they are difficult to find.
GAC

Thanks for the above info.

Regarding Leatherman...I've also heard that neurosurg does decompressions and ortho the instrumentation...but the key is that the fellow is there for the entire thing. So as a fellow, you get the benefit of both the neurosurgical and orthopaedic experience and perspectives. Although the setup is "strange" as you put it, I think this is an added benefit for the fellow, rather than a knock on the program. Certainly, I don't think it's "important" to see how neurosurgeons approach things, as if your training would be less than complete without this experience. But I think programs that offer this combined approach bring something additional to the table.

Regardless of the above, any other info you have regarding Leatherman would be appreciated. I was actually strongly considering this program, but if there are red flags that I should be aware of, I want to know about them now rather than later. Obviously, what I've heard about the place is in contrast to what you seem to know, and now it's very confusing trying to figure out what the real deal is. Perhaps if you have more info you could let me know. The fellowship year is the most important year of our training and I want to make sure I'm making a well-informed decision.

Does anyone have any info on the New England Baptist Hospital's spine fellowship in Boston?

Thanks

Does anyone have any information on the spine fellowship at University of Virginia in Charlottesville? Thanks.

Anyone with info on Paul McAfee's fellowship in Towson Maryland?

I'm a resident in Baltimore and this is 2nd-hand knowledge about McAfee, but the word is he's a MAJOR D-bag. He does a ton of cutting edge stuff with disc replacments, etc., but the fellows don't get to do much of anything. His lab is awesome and cranks out a ton of basic research, but again it doesn't sound like the clinical experience is that good. He's very well known and is doing a lot of new stuff, so if your interested in that...go for it.

He's in a decent community hospital in a nice area and he's a partner in a huge group (about 20 guys.)