Spine

The Spinal team provides an outreach service to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn (QEH) and the James Paget University Hospital in Gorleston (JPUH), where we run out-patient clinics and perform minor spinal surgery. Both hospitals provide all appropriate investigations and have experienced Pain teams and Specialist Spinal Physiotherapists who work closely with us to provide non-operative as well as operative care.

Your GP can refer you to the Spine Service at one of these hospitals if it’s more local and convenient for you. The surgeons, investigations, clinic assessment and operative techniques will be the same as those offered here at NNUH. If, after being assessed, you require more complex surgery you will be added to our waiting list for it to be performed here.

QEH and JPUH are also linked to our Emergency Spinal service – patients are initially assessed and investigated by the respective Emergency Departments and Orthopaedic teams, then referred to our Spinal team. If necessary, they are transferred here by ambulance for their specialist emergency care and then back to their local hospitals for rehabilitation and out-patient follow-up.

Emergency spinal care

We offer emergency spinal care along with CT and MRI investigations, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This is delivered by the on-call Orthopaedic team, with a Spinal Consultant always available to supervise patient management and provide operative care. There’s an experienced team of Spinal Nurse Practitioners, Specialist Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists and Pharmacists who will manage all the complex aspects of each patient’s treatment and recovery. This includes specialist spinal cord injury care, which is provided in tandem with National Spinal Cord Injury Centres.

Spinal cord injury transformation project

This video has been made to explain what patients with a spinal cord injury (SCI) can expect when they are being cared for at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and then move to the SCI rehabilitation centre in Sheffield.

Multi-disciplinary team

The Spinal team works closely with the Oncology, Haematology, Neurology, Pain and Specialist Radiologists. Regular multi-disciplinary meetings enable us to provide the highest standard of care for a broad range of complex spinal conditions including spinal trauma and spinal oncology (including emergency management of metastatic spinal cord compression).

We run specialist joint out-patient clinics with Urology Consultants to treat patients who have developed bladder issues secondary to their spinal conditions and with Pain Consultants for patients whose painful spinal conditions do not have a straightforward solution.

Interventional Radiology

Our Specialist Spinal Interventional Radiologists are at the forefront of research and development of minimally-invasive procedures to treat acute and chronic spinal conditions as well as oncological conditions. They also provide CT-guided biopsies and injections to ensure patients receive the precisely targeted treatment they require.