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Article History

Received: 4 January 2026

Revised: 18 January 2026

Accepted: 27 January 2026

First Online: 3 February 2026

Declarations

:

: Mitchell K. Ng has the following disclosures: VB Spine Inc. (paid consultant), Stryker Inc. (paid consultant), Johnson & Johnson Ethicon Inc. (paid consultant), Elevation Spine (paid consultant), CurvaFix Inc. (paid consultant), Pacira BioSciences Inc. (paid consultant), Sage Products Inc. (paid consultant), Alafair Biosciences Inc. (paid consultant), Next Science LLC (paid consultant), Bonutti Technologies Inc. (paid consultant), Hippocrates Opportunities Fund LLC (paid consultant), FISSO USA (paid consultant), MM Labs (paid consultant), Ferghana Partners Inc. (paid consultant). Afshin E. Razi has the following disclosures: 4D Motion (IP royalties), Clinical Orthopaedic Society (fiduciary officer; president; board of directors/committee member), and New York State Society of Orthopaedic Surgeons (fiduciary officer; secretary; board of directors/committee member). Ian David Kaye has the following disclosures: Camber Spine (IP royalties; paid consultant; research support), Johnson & Johnson (paid consultant), North American Spine Society (board or committee member), NuVasive (paid consultant), Spinal Cord and Case Series (editorial or governing board), and Thieme (publishing royalties; financial or material support). Mark F. Kurd has the following disclosures: DuraStat LLC (stock or stock options), K2M Spine (paid consultant), Medtronic (paid consultant), Spinal Elements (IP royalties), Stryker (IP royalties), and The Institute for Musculoskeletal Science & Education (IP royalties). Alan S. Hilibrand has the following disclosures: CTL Amedica (IP royalties), North American Spine Society (board or committee member), Paradigm Spine (stock or stock options), and ZimVie (IP royalties). Alexander R. Vaccaro has the following disclosures: Accelus (other financial or material support; stock or stock options), Advanced Spinal Intellectual Properties (stock or stock options), AO Spine (other financial or material support), Atlas Spine (stock or stock options), Avaz Surgical (stock or stock options), AVKN Patient Driven Care (stock or stock options), Cytonics (stock or stock options), Deep Health (stock or stock options), Dimension Orthotics LLC (stock or stock options), Electrocore (stock or stock options), Elsevier (publishing royalties, financial or material support), Flagship Surgical (stock or stock options), FlowPharma (stock or stock options), Globus Medical (stock or stock options), Harvard Medtech (stock or stock options), Innovative Surgical Design (stock or stock options), Jaypee (publishing royalties, financial or material support), Jushi (Haywood) (stock or stock options), National Spine Health Foundation (board or committee member), Nuvasive (stock or stock options), Orthobullets (stock or stock options), Parvizi Surgical Innovation (stock or stock options), Progressive Spinal Technologies (stock or stock options), Rothman Institute and Related Properties (stock or stock options), Sentryx (other financial or material support; stock or stock options), Stout Medical (stock or stock options), Taylor Francis/Hodder and Stoughton (publishing royalties, financial or material support), Thieme (publishing royalties, financial or material support), and ViewFi Health (stock or stock options). Gregory D. Schroeder has the following disclosures: Advance Medical (paid consultant), Bioventus (paid consultant), Surgalign (paid consultant), AOSpine (board or committee member; other financial or material support), Cervical Spine Research Society (board or committee member), Cerapedics (research support), DePuy, A Johnson & Johnson Company (research support), Medtronic Sofamor Danek (research support), and Wolters Kluwer Health – Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (editorial or governing board). Christopher K. Kepler has the following disclosures: Clinical Spine Surgery (editorial or governing board), Curetiva (IP royalties), and Regeneration Technologies, Inc. (IP royalties). All other authors have no other relevant financial disclosures. The author(s) declare that there is no conflict of interest and received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.