Coimbatore's Ganga Hospital Wins NASS Research Award for Fifth Time

Coimbatore: In a significant international recognition of its contribution to spinal research, Ganga Hospital has won the prestigious North American Spine Society (NASS) Outstanding Research Paper Award for 2026 for the fifth time, honouring a collaborative study by its Spine Surgery and Radiology departments that explores an advanced imaging technique to predict post-operative recovery in patients with degenerative cervical myelopathy.

With this latest recognition, Ganga Hospital has become one of the few centres worldwide to have received the prestigious award five times.

The award-winning research focuses on a specialised magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that could help predict recovery outcomes following surgery for compression of the cervical spinal cord.

Titled “Preoperative Metabolite Ratio Improves Prediction of Post-operative Recovery in Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy: A Prospective Cohort Study,” the paper examines the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), an advanced MRI sequence capable of measuring the concentrations of key metabolites within the spinal cord.

The study was conducted by Dr. R. Karthik, Dr. Ajoy Shetty, Dr. Pushpa B.T., Dr. Harikrishna, Dr. Swathika, Dr. Rishi Kanna and Dr. S. Rajasekaran.

The award carries a prize of USD 10,000, and the research findings will be published as a lead paper in The Spine Journal. The study is also scheduled to be presented on October 15, 2026, at the 41st Annual Meeting of the North American Spine Society in San Antonio, Texas, in the United States.

The hospital has also received several other international honours in spinal research, including the ISSLS Prize on six occasions, the EuroSpine Open Paper Award and the Asia Pacific Spine Society Award, in addition to numerous national awards from the Association of Spine Surgeons of India.