Growing a spine… reputation Province injects $2.7M into Concordia Hospital’s cutting-edge spine centre of excellence By: Carol Sanders and Chris Kitching Posted: 12:13 PM CDT Friday, Mar. 13, 2026 Last Modified: 6:38 PM CDT Friday, Mar. 13, 2026 Updates

Carol Bigold went from being housebound and in agony to climbing a mountain six months after receiving the first high-tech minimally invasive spinal surgery at Concordia Hospital.

“The pain was so severe you had to just not do anything … It would always be there, even when you’re sleeping,” the 74-year-old hiker told a news conference Friday morning at the hospital, where Premier Wab Kinew announced the province was spending $2.7 million to expand the spinal surgery program, reducing wait times and speeding up patient recoveries.

Bigold had been sidelined in recent years by sciatic nerve pain until undergoing surgery last June. In December she hiked up a mountain in England’s Lake District.

“The pain was gone, basically, once the surgery was over,” she said. “The recovery time was just amazing.”

Concordia has been using what officials described as the world’s best technology to perform minimally invasive spinal surgeries since Bigold’s life-changing operation. It is now considered a spine centre of excellence.

“This is technology that really changes the game in terms of recovery, so folks are going to be able to go home the same day, maybe the next day,” Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said.

Kinew said the spine centre of excellence is increasing efficiency, adding capacity, attracting surgeons to the province and improving Manitobans’ quality of life.

“Just the freedom to be able to live your life, to get outdoors during the wintertime, to be able to walk to the store is a huge part of having a high-quality of life, he said.

Dr. Ed Buchel, provincial surgery specialty lead with Shared Health, said 42 navigated-instrument spine surgeries have been performed at Concordia since the equipment was introduced in June.

The goal is to perform about 75 procedures per year to help reduce surgical wait times and lessen patients’ suffering.

“We’re going to be looking at a significant increase in spine care at this site — not only more spine care, but better spine care,” Buchel said.

More than 1,000 spine surgeries were performed in Manitoba last year, which is 30 per cent more than in 2019, he said.

The new technology at Concordia and HSC uses advanced 3D imaging and precision guidance, said Dr. Jay Toor, an orthopedic spine surgeon.

“One of the biggest impacts that this has had is we’re now able to move moderately complex spine surgeries that were previously only being performed at (Health Sciences Centre) out of HSC and into Concordia Hospital,” Toor said.

“This is decanting and reducing the burden in our busiest centre, HSC, allowing us to focus on the more complex cases.”

Toor said Concordia is now able to provide the “most cutting-edge” surgery to patients — who spend less time in hospital recovering and are able to get back to their normal lives sooner — while improving efficiency within Manitoba’s health-care system.

“These traditional surgeries before this technology was brought in were very long incisions with a lot of blood loss, higher patient complications,” he said.

“Most of the surgeries that are being done now… patients are going home either the same day, the next day versus they were staying in the hospital for weeks after.”

Officials said Concordia has become the primary teaching centre in Canada for the equipment; surgeons from across the country and other parts of the world — including Brazil, Qatar and Turkey — fly to Winnipeg to learn about and observe procedures.

Buchel said the technology will help to recruit more spine surgeons to Manitoba. The province has already doubled the number in the last five years, with eight currently working in Winnipeg and two in Brandon.

The expansion of Concordia’s program is being co-ordinated through Manitoba’s new spine clinic at HSC.

The NDP government announced a new provincial spine program in April 2024, with an initial $12 million in funding, to increase the number of surgeries, centralize wait lists and improve co-ordination.

Buchel said the Concordia expansion will take pressure off crowded emergency rooms and reduce wait times.

“They come in, they have severe pain, they can’t walk, they can’t pee, et cetera, et cetera,” he said.

”They don’t need to be in an emergency room for monitoring, but they need to be acutely seen by a spine surgeon.”

Patients are pulled from the emergency room and sent directly to the spine clinic for expedited imaging to determine whether surgery is needed, he said.

“We’ve cut down the wait time from sitting in the emergency room — sometimes for a day, sometimes longer than a day — to saying, ‘You’re stable, you can go to a clinic,’” Buchel said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca