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Article History

Received: 21 January 2026

Revised: 22 April 2026

Accepted: 14 May 2026

First Online: 14 June 2026

Declarations

:

: Mitchell K. Ng has the following disclosures: Stryker. Inc., Johnson & Johnson Ethicon Inc. (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), and Ferghana Partners Inc. (paid consultant). 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). Thomas Cha has the following disclosures: Globus Medical- Paid consultant, K2M- Research support, Kuros- Stock or stock Options, Nuvasive- Research support, Stryker- Paid consultant. 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.