This is Carly Beam with the Becker Spine
and Orthopedic podcast, and I'm thrilled to be
joined today by doctor Chester Donnelly
of Texas Spine Consultant.
Doctor Donnelly, thank you for joining us. Before
we dive into our main discussion, could you
please introduce yourself and tell us a bit
about your background?
Yes. This is my fortunate to be a
return customer to the Becker's podcast.
I'm a spine surgeon here in my hometown
of Dallas, Texas.
I'm in a six person spine surgery group
called Texas Spine Consultants.
My background is I'm from here, Dallas, Texas,
my hometown.
Did training kind of all over America, just
like most spine surgeons, and now I'm back
serving my local community. I do everything from
disc replacements to decompressions, diffusions,
and I have the great support of my
partners in my group, and we take care
of a lot of DFW's
biggest spine needs.
That's excellent. And I know you've grown your
social media presence quite a bit in recent
years. As of this recording on
January 24, you have more than 23,000
Instagram followers,
more than a 18,000
followers on TikTok.
I was wondering if you could share more
about why you started building your social media
presence.
Well, a lot of it is
in terms of what is social media. You
know, that's it's any platform really where any
person at any time,
anywhere in the world, as many times as
they want, can go on and share
content. Content can be text. It can be
a picture, it can be a video.
And that's
good, but that's also really bad. Right? So
in terms of
misinformation
or bad information or good experiences or bad
experiences, you know, there's so much information out
there. So what social media has done,
it's all these other platforms that for free,
anyone at any point can go up and
put out information.
The reason I started the social media stuff
is, you know, traditionally, if you had if
you saw your MRI report and you're a
patient and it said spinal stenosis, well, what
do you do? You go into Google, you
search spinal
stenosis, and likely you get
a sponsored page from
one of the big health care systems without
saying any of them, not to be in
trouble with any of them, but for the
one of the big health care systems and
very generically and very simply, they kind of
just in text tell you what that condition
is. And then if you wanna go find
blogs or something to read about that, that
was really your only source.
So one avenue I saw is, well, look,
we have all this
experience of a spine as a spine surgeon,
why not use my experience and our group's
experience to just
create
educational
content to kind of tell
patients or tell people who are having these
issues all over the state, all over the
country, all over the world kind of what
this diagnosis is. And I do that through
video content, sometimes picture content, but usually video
content with graphics and just showing them on
spine models
what foraminal stenosis is, what a laminectomy is,
what is a cervical disc replacement, what's a
lumbar disc replacement.
So really, I was filling a void that
was much more prominent back in 2016,
'20 '18.
There's more creators out there now fortunately kind
of supporting me on this, and,
my initial thought was really just filling this
void of a lack of credible,
trustworthy, and ethical content.
Got it. And I remember you said in
an interview in 2022
with my colleague, Alan, you mentioned,
doctor Matthew Harvin, orthopedic surgeon with Yes.
A big inspiration for getting into this yourself.
Are there any pieces of advice or practices
of his that you've implemented into your own
work?
Definitely. You know, he was the one when
I initially started, I was just doing
just using and so the same content across
all platforms, but I was really just kinda
focusing on Instagram and Facebook.
He and I still give him credit to
this day. He was telling me, he's like,
hey. You should get on this TikTok platform.
And I was like, no. That's only for
kids in middle school dancing. And he's like,
you're a fool. That's absolutely not true.
And I still give him all the credit
in the world. And he has built up
a huge platform of millions of followers across
his stuff. But you have to shout out
to him. He's a hip and knee specialist
in the
DC, Virginia area.
My advice he kind of gave you is
just start doing it. If you're already doing
content somewhere else, you might as well do
it on all the platforms. Well, that's pretty
easy advice. But the first advice is you
just got to start figuring out what you
want to do with it. Do you want
to have content that's just funny, that's just
jokes, that makes people laugh? Great. Well, I'm
not that funny. I don't think I could
do that. Do you want content that is
dancing and just sharing your
experiences in the OR or pre op or
with your nursing staff or
your physician assistant team. Great. Well,
I'm not a good dancer. So what do
I got left? I have the educational content
and really just showing patients different conditions. So
I think there's kind of those three, maybe
four, if you include a couple other platform
content. You just have to have a basis
and kind of stick with your basis and
just kind of focus on what you think
you're good at.
And how are you seeing your social media
presence
translate into your day to day work? Do
you see people coming from TikTok saying they
want they want your help? Do you see
patients coming in feeling more
knowledgeable than maybe, let's say, a decade ago?
Absolutely.
You know, it's
I used to go and tell people how
great it was and how they should do
it, but now maybe I don't want everyone
doing it just in terms of how much
it helps grow a practice.
Fortunately, I'm at a point in my practice
where I'm
happy to share the love. And I think,
you know, I got a group of about,
I don't know, fifteen, twenty spine surgeon friends
I have either from residency or fellowship or
different training or courses or online. And, you
know, there's I might get a text from
one of them or someone else every couple
days either
thanking me or cursing me for sending them
a patient in their hometown because I have
these patients from
California,
New York, South Florida, Philadelphia, and they ask
me in the comment box, like, hey. Who's
a good spine surgeon you would trust in
my area? And I have all these resources
to give them. And so I'm able to
kinda share the love and for better or
worse, different spine patients go to my
friends or colleagues or people that I just
think are really good, trustworthy, and ethical.
And sometimes those patients
instead of wanna fly down here to Dallas,
Texas to be seen by me, which I
always do appreciate.
But it's definitely been something, one, to help
with organic recruitment.
But then something else I thought has been
pretty interesting and also, you know, some majority
of patients I see have no idea that
I have social media. Right? But maybe when
they go home and they wanna research their
condition,
my goodness, all of a sudden my YouTube
video pops up about
spondylolisthesis.
And they're like, not only am I learning
about the condition, but that's my doctor, again,
telling me what he told me in the
office. And then they can show their family
and friends
or their sons and daughters or grandkids.
So it's been helpful, one, from a organic
patient recruitment,
but two, also to kind of reinforce some
of the concepts I am able to fortunately
share with some of my local community.
Yeah. And I can imagine for patients, it
must be a really cool feeling to realize,
hey. My surgeon, the TikTok doctor, he's famous.
Yeah. But, obviously, the social media landscape is
ever evolving.
Algorithms
are
changing. There are new platforms often
trying to take hold. And, you know, obviously,
recently with TikTok, there's been a lot of
uncertainty with that, at least in The US.
So I'm wondering, you know, as a social
media star, how are you strategizing
around these changes?
Well,
I kinda have two different hats I wear.
One, just as a
normal consumer
of it. And in terms of what are
the changes, of course, it's the TikTok. It's
the TikTok ban that was
extended maybe or not extended. TikTok is left
is kept alive maybe for another ninety days.
It's probably the easiest way to say it.
And then one of the hats I wear
is just from a consumer. I think anyone
that uses TikTok regularly will tell you that
it really is the best platform. I like
it because
not only does it entertain me, it gives
me my news.
It gives me my sports updates.
It shows me
golf practicing swings that I'm never gonna practice.
It shows me different movie clips or clips
from TV shows that I like that kind
of entertain me and make me laugh. It's
just the algorithm is what makes the platform
very powerful.
And
on one side, just as a consumer, that's
why it's definitely the best and definitely my
favorite.
But then the other hat I'm wearing, maybe
my my scrub hat now,
I enjoy it because that's where I've been
able to have the best foothold
and the best
patient or
spine pathology interaction.
YouTube has been helpful for me.
Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, those are all good platforms
also, but just a little bit of a
different
market. And also, I don't just you know,
frankly, I do so well on Instagram and
or sorry, do so well on TikTok and
YouTube. I haven't put as much attention in
those. So in terms of
the TikTok ban that probably will hold up
after another couple months, unfortunately,
I am putting more of my attention to
some of those other platforms. That's definitely true.
So really just it sounds like strategizing,
looking into different channels, and keeping up to
different avenues of reaches
of
the move here.
And my last question for you today, doctor
Donnelly,
what are three health care trends that you're
following this year?
Well,
I have you know, in training, we didn't
use much navigation
for placing pedicle screws in cages because
of whatever reason, and I felt very comfortable
not using navigation.
I legitimately just woke up one day, decided
I didn't like the
extra radiation risk coming to myself, coming to
my team from not using navigation.
And so now I navigate, for the most
part, probably 90%
of this pedicle screws I place.
Okay. That's all great, but there's so much
infrastructure
needed for navigation these days. There's so much
cost. You know, most of these hospitals that
have it, they've already purchased it well before
I came along in terms of the million
dollar
CT scanners on wheels, not to use any
brand names,
even the intraoperative,
C arm that make the three d navigation
possible.
But it's all expensive, takes up a lot
of space.
It's a tad cumbersome if you don't have
the a team in terms of the x-ray
techs that day. And so if there's a
way we can continue to make the navigation
technology
smaller and cheaper, just like our cell phones,
just like our TVs that used to be
huge and really expensive, you know, over a
span of ten years and twenty years, TVs
have gotten smaller,
less expensive, and more powerful. I think it'd
be great to see some of our navigation
technology,
some of the augmented reality technology
that is a little bulky and a little
cumbersome now. But if that can be something
that's even smaller, it could be placed onto
some of the glasses you're wearing. There's just
so many avenues from that standpoint. So navigation
is one way. But
to be fair, navigation right now, kind of
make my number two point, is really just
for fusions. It would be great if we
can use navigation
to help us with decompressions. You know, we
talk about robotic technology all the time. And
right now, for the most part, robots only
help with fusion.
So kind of going in the same
breath in terms of navigation and technology, now
adding robots in here, it'd be great if
robots' navigation
could help us with decompression.
It'd be great if there's tools and there's
some out there that are being tested and
being used. Like, how do we know when
we've decompressed enough of the spine? Is there
a certain probe we can put on the
nerve and it tells us, hey. Now that
nerve is nice and wide open. You don't
need to keep digging around. You don't need
to keep taking out bone. You've done the
job. So from a navigation technology standpoint,
from a non fusion standpoint, I think that's
a great role. And then number three
is just looking at physician health. Is there
certain things in terms of our OR structures,
the loops we wear, the microscopes we use
that help put less strain on our neck,
less strain on our back. It kind of
goes my first thing again with navigation. The
reason I switched to navigation,
it was less radiation.
So hopefully, better health benefits for me long
term. Are there other things as a surgeon
I can do in the OR, in the
office that help my longevity that helps me
not
retire due to having multiple neck fusions and
neck surgery from having to bend down and
do T lifts or ACDS or disc replacements
all day? So those those are the three
things that I'm interested in. Fortunately, there's a
lot of colleagues and peers I have who
are very actively and very publicly
researching these topics, and they're sharing their findings.
They're they're they're just on the social media
platforms, particularly LinkedIn. They're really sharing the different
avenues that they're going about promoting these different
technologies.
Absolutely. And it seems like
there's still so much potential for all these
spine technologies
to grow even with all the progress we've
made. And then I just wanna ask one
more quick follow-up question. So
you said you just decide you woke up
one day and you decided, you know, I'm
gonna learn how to do navigation. Can you
talk about
the learning curve and how you're you were
able to,
trust?
Most
all these new technologies, whether it's robotics,
endoscopy,
navigation, probably the other one,
are about a learning curve of 30 cases.
There's many great videos and journal clubs on
Seattle Science Foundation where they talk about these
and they share the papers. But all of
them are about 30 cases until where the
learning curve starts to flatten.
So one is you just got to start
doing them. I think something else that helped
me in particular,
say, a novel surgery like the prone lateral
interbody fusion, well, that was a surgery I
didn't get any exposure to in fellowship. But
fortunately, when I came out of training,
one of the experts in Dallas Fort Worth,
a guy named Michael Hennessy, he had been
doing
lateral pronalateral fusion surgeries for years.
He was I was able to scrub in
with several cases with him on his patients
and just kind of see the anatomy and
see the setup for it. And then when
I started booking my own patients for a
prone lateral,
he blocked out time and came and joined
me. So I think having a mentor there
with you
is a way that we can really kind
of help grow it. That's the advantage of
being in a group of other spine surgeons
is you have peers who can help guide
you through new technology or new learning curves.
Absolutely. Hey. You know, maybe sometime you'll make
a TikTok video to encourage fellow spine surgeons
to take the leap into navigation.
Absolutely.
Yeah. Well, doctor Donnelly, thank you so much
for joining the podcast today. It's been a
real pleasure speaking with you, and I look
forward to connecting again in the future.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for the privilege
of sharing a couple of my thoughts with
our peers, both nationally and internationally.
Absolutely.