Often, as a company rises to the top, the allure of “bright lights, big city” can draw it away from its original mission. In the case of Centinel Spine, however, there has been a “Guard-in-Chief” who has successfully walked the tightrope of keeping everyone moving in the right direction while at the same time knowing when to let them innovate. That sentinel is John Viscogliosi.
Viscogliosi, Centinel Spine Chairman & CEO, has much to celebrate with his team these days, reaching a massive milestone of more than 185,000 devices implanted for its various technology platforms and hailing the 10th anniversary of its founding.
Life was first breathed into Centinel Spine, LLC in August 2008 via the merger-acquisition of Raymedica and Surgicraft. “Four months later,” says Viscogliosi, “we acquired the STALIF® (stand-alone lumbar interbody fusion) portfolio and have since grown it to be what others view as the company for stand-alone devices worldwide. Although in the last 10 years we have enhanced the products, we have not strayed from the fundamentals and the design rationale of what makes our products work so well.”
The developments, says Viscogliosi, have focused on ease-of-use improvements regarding implantation and improved fit and fill within the interbody spaces. “We are now investigating novel materials enhancements, as well as concentrating on the ability to offer a tried-and-true rationale for all we do.”
The Family Business? Integrity.
For Viscogliosi, who grew up in a close-knit Italian-American family, business is fundamentally personal. “We try to do things in ways that reflect our integrity. Centinel is here to help surgeons create devices that have long-term clinical success to assist them in addressing their patients’ clinical needs. Why? Because the patient on that operating table is someone’s mother, father, sister, brother, or child.”
“We could have taken shortcuts or avoided the time- and resource-consuming commitment of clinical studies,” states Viscogliosi, “but that was out of the question! We spared no expense of time or effort in choosing materials or material enhancements. For example, when we were developing our titanium coated PEEK [polyetheretherketone] product line, we collaborated with an academic institution to optimize the surface topography which directly affects the potential for cells to adhere and proliferate and leads to greater surgical efficacy. This was one of the first coatings in our field to be based in science and not just marketing.”
Such meticulousness has paid off. “Our surface topography and titanium ensure that cells proliferate 20x greater compared to other titanium surfaces. In the past year, we moved into 3D titanium printing so that we could achieve geometries and surface characteristics not possible with traditional methods. Again, we went for the scientific approach. We didn’t just print holes on the device—we spent a lot of time evaluating structural characteristics that were most conducive to bone formation and then mimicked that structure to enhance bone growth. The 3D designs are found in the proven fundamentals of mechanical load-sharing of the STALIF products but now have exceptional osteopromotive potential. We chose to lead the way versus copy or modify someone else’s design.”
And when it came to verifying which design was superior—a three- or four-screw construct—Centinel again did a deep-dive. “We embarked on a substantial amount of biomechanical testing and invested quite a bit of funds in order to understand the differences between a two, three and four-screw design. It became evident that a three-screw design is just as strong as four…but a two-screw design didn’t have the equivalent biomechanical principles and equivalence to what we set out to do. A two-screw design would have been too much of a compromise.”
