Eeric Truumees, M.D.

Eeric Truumees, M.D., is a fellowship-trained, board-certified orthopaedic spine surgeon with a special focus on complex, cervical spine reconstruction and spinal trauma surgery. His research interests include interdisciplinary spine care programs, outcomes analysis and spinal biomechanics. He is the CEO and chairman of the Seton Brain and Spine Institute and professor of surgery at Dell Medical School. He supervises the spine surgery rotation for orthopaedic surgery residents and medical students.

Born to a military family in Fort Benning, Georgia, Truumees was a Bowman Scholar at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. After finishing medical school in 1993, he entered the orthopaedic surgery residency program at Cleveland Clinic. Upon completion of residency in 1998, he moved to Royal Oak, Michigan, where he completed a fellowship in spine surgery under Harry Herkowitz, M.D., at the William Beaumont Hospital Spine Center. Truumees entered clinical practice in 1999 joining Herkowitz and Jeffrey Fischgrund, M.D., at the Michigan Orthopaedic Institute. In October 2010, he relocated to Austin, Texas.

Truumees’ academic work has included more than 15 National Institutes of Health and industry-sponsored multi-center trials, which generated over 30 peer-reviewed publications of original research, 40 invited publications and 50 chapters and monographs. He was editor of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Orthopaedic Knowledge Update Spine, 5th Edition. Truumees frequently participates in national and international events, including more than 200 presentations, lectureships and instructorships.

Truumees’ honors include membership in the American Orthopaedic Association and Detroit Hour Magazine “Top Doctor” status. Others include the AAOS Senior Achievement Awards and membership in Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. Truumees is currently vice president of the North American Spine Society. He is a member of the AAOS Communications Cabinet and editor-in-chief of AAOS Now.

Truumees is deputy editor of JBJS: Essential Surgical Techniques and was a deputy editor of the Spine Journal. He sits on the editorial boards of Spine and Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, among others. He edited Selective Exposures: Spine and two issues of Seminars in Spine Surgery.

While at Beaumont, Truumees was orthopaedic director of the Gehring Biomechanics Laboratory and was on the adjunct faculty of the Wayne State University Bioengineering Center. He remains active in implant design and has been awarded two patents and has two current patent submissions.

Truumees’ community activity includes six medical relief missions to Ghana as part of the Foundation for Orthopaedics and Complex Spine. He was awarded Detroit’s Distinguished Service Award in 2004. He advises undergraduates interested in medicine and medical students through the UVA Alumni Association and the AAOS.