Yang Si-Dong

Since 2014, Dr. Sidong Yang has been working as an Orthopedic Spine Surgeon in Hebei Medical University Third Hospital, one of the top orthopaedic hospitals in China. His spine department has a big workload of spine surgeries, more than 5000 surgeries annually. So far, Dr. Sidong Yang has performed more than 1000 surgeries, most of which are lumbar disc herniation caused by intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration (IVDD). In addition, he has a passion on the research of spine area, particularly in regeneration of the degenerated discs. Dr Yang’s group is trying to find out the cross-talk between clinical and basic research on intervertebral disc degeneration and regeneration. He and colleagues have found that estrogen-deficient female patients suffer severer IVD degeneration than the parallel control patients. Furthermore, the female patients suffering severer IVD degeneration possess less estrogen receptors in the degenerated IVDs, compared with those less severe. These findings induced a series of studies on the effect of estrogen on IVD regeneration. Interestingly, Dr Yang’s group developed a rat IVDD model by combining ovariectomy with needle puncture to annulus fibrosus. Another important milestone is that they established estrogen receptor β -knockout mice, which enable in-depth studies on estrogen effect on IVD regeneration. Moreover, rabbit IVDD models have been successfully established using two different ways-needle puncture and chondroitinase injection. So far, Dr. Yang has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and secured 3 grants as CIA, another 4 grants as CIB. Dr Yang has worked as a peer reviewer for more than 30 international journals, eg, World Neurosurgery.