Virtual Spine Course for Allied Health Professionals

Michail Kokkinakis is a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital and an honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at King’s College London. He is the Lead Surgeon on adolescent hip preservation surgery at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust while his additional subspecialty interests include modern management of orthopaedic deformities in children with cerebral palsy as well as treatment of complex feet deformities.

Michail graduated from the medical school of University of Frankfurt in Germany and received his surgical and orthopaedic training in the UK and Greece. He is fellowship-trained in Glasgow, Evelina London and Stanmore. He has a PhD in orthopaedics awarded by the University of Frankfurt, Germany and a PgCert in Clinical Leadership awarded by the University of Teesside, UK. He has an extensive list of 36 Medline publications.

He is member of the British Society for Children’s Orthopaedic Surgery, British Society for Surgery in Cerebral Palsy and the European Paediatric Orthopaedic Society. He is co-chair of Cerebral Palsy Integrated Pathway for South East England as well as BSCOS Delphi flatfoot consensus group and a regular reviewer for the Bone and Joint Journal.

Gavin Spence is a full time Consultant Paediatric Orthopaedic Surgeon at Evelina London Children’s Hospital. His particular clinical interest is in external fixation and limb deformity correction. Prior to this he was a consultant for King’s College Hospital London (Dubai) and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, treating children with a variety of tertiary paediatric orthopaedic conditions including neuromuscular pathology. He trained in London and Cambridge, with fellowships in Great Ormond Street, Stanmore, and Adelaide.

Whilst on the BASS Executive between 2010 and launch in 2012, he co-developed the British Spine Registry with Lee Breakwell. He became the first Chair of a BOA group developing the newer Orthopaedic Registries (TORUS). Since 2005, he has been the Spinal Chair of the Orthopaedic Expert Working Group advising the NHS on spinal coding, healthcare resource groups and tariff. After being a member of the last Spinal Taskforce in 2010/11, he became Chair of the Spinal Services Clinical Reference Group advising NHS England on commissioning specialised spinal and spinal cord injuries. During this role between 2012 and 2019, they introduced a national service specification for specialised spinal surgery and developed the Regional Spinal Networks which have continued to flourish. He is currently Past President of the British Scoliosis Society and Chief Investigator of the NIHR HTA funded Bracing Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (BASIS) study, a multi-centre RCT comparing full-time versus night-time bracing.

Mr Lakkol is a Spinal Consultant at Healthpoint Hospital. He deals with all aspects of spinal surgery including degenerative spinal conditions, trauma and metastatic spinal disease. In addition, he has a special interest in paediatric spinal surgery including the treatment of scoliosis. He has close awareness of the current challenges in health service and a unique interest in providing digital health solutions to day-to-day health care problems. He has further interest in research and innovation in spinal surgery.

Laura is a Specialist Paediatric Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist. APPI certified matwork and equipment Pilates instructor. APPI presenter and education author.

Spinal Clinical lead at Alder Hey Childrens Hospital, Liverpool

Adult and Paediatric spinal surgeon with a Specialist interest in paediatric deformity. 

Graduate; University of Leeds

Orthopaedic training; Merseyside rotation. 

Spinal fellowships: Robert Jones Agnes Hunt Hospital, Alder Hey Childrens Hospital, Brisbane Mater Hospital. 

One wish for paediatric deformity;  Diagnosis to treatment as early as possible as quickly as possible. 

Originally from Cork, Ireland, Sarah moved to Bristol in September 2000 to study physiotherapy at the University of the West of England. After qualifying in 2003, Sarah worked at Hope Hospital in Salford until moving into paediatrics at Alder Hey Hospital, Liverpool in 2006. She worked across all acute and community paediatric specialities gaining an interest in Neurology. In 2012, Sarah started in the Neuromuscular team. In 2015, she completed an MRes in Health Science with distinction. Having gained a keen interest in research during her MRes studies, Sarah took the opportunity to take up a 2 year research secondment as part of the Alder Hey Neuromuscular team, in collaboration with Duchenne UK, and continues now to participate as a clinical evaluator in many DMD Studies as well as contributing to national audits such as North Star and SMA Reach study.