Bio
Dr. Bednar is a graduate of McGill University’s MDCM advanced medical training program and after completing Orthopaedics residency with McGill was privileged to complete Spine Fellowship training with the great Canadian pioneer of spinal realignment osteotomy and disc arthroplasty Dr. John Kostuik at the University of Toronto before joining the McMaster faculty where he has practiced, taught and researched for over three highly successful decades. He remains unique in the current McMaster orthopaedics faculty in holding both Canadian and US Board certification in his specialty and has a wide range of interests in adult spine care including tissue biomechanics, behaviour, patient education and surgical innovation in addition to clinical care issues.
A founding member of the Canadian Spine Society and the first Clinical Professor of Orthopaedics at McMaster, Dr. Bednar’s research and clinical innovations activity have brought recognition by and membership to the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar spine, the North American Spine Society, and the AO Spine Group in addition to numerous other international, national and regional orthopaedic professional associations.
Dr. Bednar’s primary clinical care interest is in the evolution and delivery of seamless, effective, uncomplicated and outcomes-predictable adult surgical spine care. To that end he has evolved and presented protocols for ambulatory surgical spine care, oral steroids preoperative co-analgesia and optimized pedicle screw biomechanics, and hosts a widely read patient education website dedicated to the lumbar spine surgery patient at www.spinesurgeryexperience.com. He lead McMaster’s first prospective clinical trial in adult spine care and was awarded our first research grant (from the North American Spine Society) in tissue mechanics. In addition to training numerous Fellows in adult surgical surgery care he hosted McMaster’s first and only PhD in Spine biomechanics.
Dr. Bednar has published 60 peer-reviewed publications in his specialty. He also writes, publishes and presents at the podium regularly to peers and affiliated medical specialty groups in the interest of driving improvement in spine care through knowledge translation.
Dr. Bednar is a regular Reviewer and editor for the journals Spine, Global Spine Journal, Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery, Journal of Orthopaedic Research and Canadian Family Physician and a consultant to Health Quality Ontario and the Ontario Health Technology Advisory Committee.