The Oitment Spine Research Laboratory
A clinical research lab led by Dr Colby Oitment, focused on the questions that shape day-to-day spine surgery care — outcomes patients actually feel, complications we can prevent, and the patient factors we should be optimizing before the OR.
What we work on
The lab's questions cluster around three themes, each grounded in clinical practice rather than the strength of a particular method:
- Outcomes that matter to patients. Beyond strength-and-reflex scores, we measure mental health, satisfaction, return to work, bladder function, and sensory recovery in spine surgery patients — and ask why a meaningful subset of patients feel the surgery didn't work for them even when textbook scores improve.
- Postoperative complications and morbidity. Urinary retention, deep infection management, blood conservation, proximal junctional kyphosis — the complications that drive readmission and dissatisfaction. We synthesize the evidence and look for the modifiable steps most surgeons miss.
- Who the patient in front of us is — and how to prepare them. Frailty, expectations, self-efficacy, central sensitization, preoperative mental health, conservative care. The work that happens before the OR door opens.
How we work
Most of the lab's output is systematic reviews and meta-analyses — the kind of work that takes a fragmented literature and turns it into something a clinician can use. We're training the next generation of evidence-literate spine surgeons: medical students, residents, and fellows run the projects, and we publish broadly across the spine journals. Every study moves through a standardized 14-step pipeline that is visible to the whole team — so accountability is built in and trainees learn the entire research lifecycle, not just one slice of it.
Get involved
Medical students, residents, and fellows interested in spine research are welcome to reach out. We bring trainees in at the screening level on a current systematic review and progress them to project lead as their skills grow.
Established collaborators and clinicians: if a project of yours would benefit from systematic review support, statistical modelling, or co-authorship, get in touch.
Explore the work
- → Lab dashboard — current studies and what we're focused on this week
- → Publications — every peer-reviewed paper, citations, and the lab influence radar
- → Team — current trainees, project leads, and collaborators
- → Submitted & accepted — recent work that's hit the journal stage