Patient First. Always.
Improving the lives of patients is at the heart of everything we do.
Our story
More than 25 years in the making.
The idea behind VBO, correcting the spine within the vertebral body rather than fusing across the disc, wasn’t born in a lab. It began in the operating room, more than two decades before Foundation Surgical was founded.
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2000
Dr. Randal Betz performs vertebral wedge osteotomies on 14 patients with paralytic scoliosis, using a custom non-fusion wedge device to correct the spine within the vertebral body.
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2003
The results are published in Spine: “The Feasibility, Safety, and Utility of Vertebral Wedge Osteotomies for the Fusionless Treatment of Paralytic Scoliosis.”
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2010
A follow-up study reports preserved function at two years in the earlier paralytic scoliosis patient population. View the citation.
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2021
Foundation Surgical is founded to develop a procedure and device that make VBO a widely available surgical option.
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2024
Vertiwedge receives FDA clearance under K241468.
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May 14, 2026
Dr. Shirvinda Wijesekera performs the first VBO case.
Entries from 2000–2010 describe earlier research using a different device in a different patient population. They are not results of VBO with Vertiwedge.
“More than twenty-five years ago, we saw what correcting the spine within the vertebra could make possible. Foundation Surgical exists to bring that idea to far more patients.”
Randal Betz, MD Founder and CEO
Dr. Randal Betz is Past President of the Scoliosis Research Society and former Chief of Staff and Medical Director of the Spinal Cord Injury Program at Shriners Hospitals for Children–Philadelphia. He holds ten U.S. patents for scoliosis treatments and has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Betz pioneered intravertebral correction, the principle behind VBO.
