Jamaican Dr Kingsley Chin revolutionising spinal surgery

Andrea Baugh served as principal of a private school in Jamaica for some 14 years until she was forced to retire in 2021 due to chronic back pain.

“I was bent over and the pain was excruciating,” she told The Gleaner.

Today, after having a spinal device implanted, Baugh is giving serious consideration to returning to the work force.

“The pain is gone and I am able to stand straight. I am doing all the things I could not do when I had the back pain,” she said.

She said her transformation was sparked after she received treatment using an invention by Jamaica-born, Harvard-educated spine surgeon, Kingsley Chin.Dr. Chin, who attended Titchfield High School in Jamaica, is the founder of Kingsley Investment Company, the parent company of KIC Ventures which aims to invest in physician leadership and technology development.

Especially passionate about revolutionising how spinal injury is treated, he has developed several spinal devices to treat back pain.

So far, he has had some 103 patent citations registered in his name. He received the latest just last month.

Baugh said that her husband, who also suffers from a herniated disc, came across details of Dr. Chin’s extensive work in the area during his Internet search for options for care. He suggested that she try the featured procedure, which she did.

The surgery was done last year and involved Dr. Chin implanting an ‘Inspan’ device which achieves spinal fusion without pedicle screws.

According to the document that accompanied the request for a patent for the device, “ Inspan treats the underlying degenerative disc and facet joints that cause painful spinal stenosis and instability. It is an implant used in a minimally invasive technique for outpatient ambulatory surgery to provide lasting relief.’

Dr. Chin said that the device which had been implanted in Mrs. Baugh has also been implanted in a number of patients in the United States and elsewhere with excellent clinical outcomes. He described Inspan as a ground-breaking patent which fixes the spine without screws. Patients are able to go home the same day of the surgery and recovery is very quick.

He said that the Inspan patent makes spinal procedure simple and adjustable, fast and effective.

Dr. Chin explained that the device opens the spinal canal and the foramen to relieve nerve compression, restores disc height, decompresses and fixates the facet joints to immobilise them for the bony surfaces to fuse.

LEADING INVENTOR

Addressing the future of spinal medicine, he said the good news is that the profession has got a lot better at fusing patients.“We have also gotten better at the development of devices and biologics,” he said.

The most disruptive force in spine care, he said, is patients beginning to reject fusion.

Dr. Chin said that in 2000, while still a resident at Harvard, he saw that fixating the spine using a percutaneous pedicle screw was a great idea and so began working to develop solutions that he thought would be better than what was then available on the market.

This led him to patent several devices, some of which are in use in countries as far away as Germany.

A recent peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Spinal Surgery noted that clinical results of Inspan being used to treat spinal stenosis are proof of its effectiveness.

Dr. Chin, who is a board certified professor of orthopaedics spine surgeon and an adjunct professor at the University of Technology in Kingston, is the first and only Jamaican to have so many patent citations in the United States. He is the leading inventor in the world of spinal devices to fix back pain.

But it has not been all smooth sailing for Dr. Chin.

For the past several years he has been fighting charges brought against him by the United States Department of Justice that he paid kickbacks to some spine surgeons to use his inventions and have his devices sold on the market. Dr. Chin has denied any wrongdoing and has pledged to fight the charges to clear his name.

He has faced resistance to his success, but credits his upbringing by a single mother in Buff Bay, Portland, for preparing him to battle obstacles.

He told The Gleaner that he will not stop his efforts to revolutionise the spinal surgery market and will not allow forces to stop him from bringing relief to patients.

Dr. Chin believes that Jamaica and Jamaicans must move towards more technological inventions and has urged students to focus on technology and technological inventions that will revolutionise industries.

So convincing is Mrs. Baugh’s complete recovery that her husband – a relative of the late Dr. Ken Baugh, the former JLP minister of health – is also slated to have Dr. Chin preform surgery to ease his condition. Mrs. Baugh and her husband agreed to speak with The Gleaner about their treatment.

Dr. Chin may be reached through his website www.thelessinstitute.com