Noelle Larson, MD

Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial of Implant Density in AIS: Results of the Minimize Implants Maximize Outcomes Study

Michelle Welborn, MD

Collagen X Biomarker (CXM) is Predictive of Growth Cessation in Idiopathic Scoliosis

Scott Rosenfeld, MD

Age-Based Screening for Non-Accidental Trauma in Children Less than 3 Years Old with Femur Fracture

James Sanders, MD

Safely Reducing Unnecessary Radiographs in Suspected Pediatric Musculoskeletal Injuries Through a Multidisciplinary Developed Algorithm

Behrooz Akbarnia, MD

Behrooz Akbarnia, M.D. graduated from Tehran University and continued his Orthopaedic Surgery residency at Albany Medical Center including a year of Pediatric Orthopaedics under Dr. Howard Steel in Philadelphia. He then completed a Scoliosis Fellowship at Twin Cities Scoliosis Center with Dr. John Moe and colleagues. Dr. Akbarnia was Professor/Vice Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at St. Louis University and Chief of Pediatric Orthopaedics at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital for 10 years before relocating to San Diego in 1990. There, he established his academic practice, created the San Diego Spine Fellowship Program and founded the San Diego Spine Foundation to support educational and research programs.

Dr. Akbarnia’s interest has been focused on spinal deformity, especially Early Onset Scoliosis which started with POSNA Growing Rod Tutorials at Children’s Hospital, San Diego. He then worked with other colleagues to establish the Growing Spine Study Group. GSSG recently merged with CSSG to become Pediatric Spine Study Group (PSSG), creating the largest database of young children with spine deformity. In 2007, he established International Congress on Early Onset Scoliosis (ICEOS), which just held its 13th Annual Meeting. He has published several books including 2 editions of The Growing Spine Textbook (3rd Ed. in progress). His efforts have significantly affected the lives of young children with spinal deformity around the world.

He has helped many children globally with his innovations, developing new means for treating young children with EOS. His efforts comprise over 200 peer-reviewed publications, many book chapters, and presentations nationally and internationally. He has received the AAP Distinguished Service Award, SRS’s Blount Humanitarian and Lifetime Achievement Awards. He is past president of Scoliosis
Research Society and currently a Clinical Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at University of California; San Diego.

He and Nasrin married in 1968 and now reside in La Jolla, California. He is both proud father of three children and grandfather of five.

Lori Karol, MD

Dr. Lori Karol is currently the Assistant Chief of Staff and Chief Quality Officer at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, and professor of orthopaedic surgery at the University of Texas-Southwestern in Dallas. She is the medical director of the movement science laboratory. She earned her undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Michigan, and served her orthopaedic residency at Wayne State University in Detroit. Dr. Karol completed a fellowship in pediatric orthopaedics and scoliosis at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas. She served as the president of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America in 2015-2016. Her clinical areas of interest include scoliosis, clubfoot, and the orthopaedic management of cerebral palsy. She has authored 93 peer reviewed manuscripts on topics ranging from early onset scoliosis, the orthotic management of scoliosis, the application of gait analysis in clubfoot. She has lectured widely both nationally and internationally. She credits her success to the team at Scottish Rite, especially Tony Herring, who has served as a mentor throughout her career. Lori has been married to Bob Karol for 35 years, and has three lovely and successful daughters, Molly, Leah, and Abby.

Donald Bae, MD

Donald S. Bae, MD is a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Attending Surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital. He also serves as co-director of the Harvard Hand and Upper Extremity Fellowship, Associate Clinical Director of the SimPeds Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Associate Program Director of the Harvard Combined Orthopaedic Surgery Residency.

After completing his undergraduate and medical school degrees at Harvard, Dr. Bae completed orthopaedic surgery residency in the Harvard Combined Orthopaedic Residency Program. He joined the faculty at Boston Children’s Hospital after fellowship training in both pediatric orthopaedics and hand surgery. Clinically, Dr. Bae specializes in congenital, traumatic, neuromuscular, and sports-related conditions of the hand and upper limb.

In addition to patient care, his clinical research focuses on pediatric upper limb conditions, including congenital differences of the hand. Dr. Bae currently serves as PI of a multicenter prospective longitudinal cohort study of children and adolescents with distal radius fractures, supported by a POSNA Quality-Safety-Value grant. He is co-PI of a multicenter prospective registry of congenital hand differences, with currently over 2,500 patients enrolled across seven institutions in North America. Most recently, he has helped form a multicenter effort studying osteochondritis dissecans of the elbow.

A devoted member of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America, Dr. Bae has previously served on the POSNA Board of Directors as the junior member-at-large, as chair of the Educational Courses Committee, and most recently Director of the International Pediatric Orthopaedic Symposium.

Charles Johnston, MD

After growing up in the 50’s & 60’s in Southern California, Charlie Johnston left the Beach Boys/Jan & Dean for the right coast attending Yale, Columbia P&S, and U.Va. before coming full circle back to Texas where family ancestors first immigrated to south Texas in the 1870’s. After fellowship at TSRH with Tony Herring and Dennis Wenger and a brief stint at LSU NOLa, he has had but one job, secured only with a handshake, since 1985, and attributes his medical “attitude” directly to the TSRH philosophy that provides the most expert care available anywhere to any child with an orthopedic condition, without regard to the cost – actually, there was no billing dept.at TSRH - or amount of time to complete the task.

Having known and been mentored by many giants – the aforementioned Herring and Wenger, Luque, Dubousset, Coleman, Hall, Goldner, Gillespie, Dimeglio, to name a few - it didn’t take much to transport all that knowledge and expertise to patients unable , through geographic or political isolation, to access care and escape the debilitation and impairment of neglected treatable conditions. The goal however was not to simply swoop in, operate, and be back in the office by Monday, but to identify, train and mentor local orthopods who could then effectively treat their own population while minimizing the effects of neglect and incompetence. He was first challenged to venture to the Moskito Coast, Honduras to treat children who could only be reached by air or water – no roads existed to connect to the usual “mission” sites in San Pedro Sula or inland. Then an opportunity to build a spine deformity program in the West Bank, Palestinian Territory arose through the auspices of Hugh Watts and The Palestine Childrens Relief Fund(PCRF). There were no local physicians in Moskito environs, so those patients had to be brought to Dallas for surgery and rehab….but once we penetrated the physical and political isolation of Palestine, it was just a matter of enlisting other US mentors and an Israeli colleague to develop now three well-trained and competent “residents” who engage as COUR scholars and who have become our junior colleagues locally.

The message: there are probably an infinite number of patients and places needing POSNA expertise, and many are covered by regularly-visiting brigades. But imagine the efficiency and the benefit when you can teach, train and turn over care to someone who lives locally and becomes the pediatric orthopedist for their community, region, even nation. The value of having local pediatric orthopedic colleagues with real “skin in the game” is a worthy goal for POSNA colleagues who can commit more to the patients who are otherwise reliant only on the visiting brigades and Mercy ships or have the means to travel to come to us.

Raymond Liu, MD

An Ovine Study of Locked Intramedullary Implants Across the Distal Femoral Growth Plate
Raymond Liu, MD; Alex Benedick, MD; Chang-Yeon Kim, MD; Kouami Amakoutou, MD; Derrick Knapik, MD; Lewis Zirkle, MD
Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital/Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH

Indranil Kushare, MD

Talo-Calcaneal Coalition Resection with Ankle Arthroscopy
Indranil Kushare, MD; Shane Ford, PA-C; Kristen Kastan; John Shilt, PA-C 
Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, TX