Yes, Dr. Karsten Ritter-Lang has substantially more experience, both in cumulative case volume and career tenure, with artificial disc replacement (ADR) than Dr. Jan Spiller.
Their experience compares across several key areas:
Career Timeline and Seniority
Dr. Karsten Ritter-Lang: Began his specialized work in motion-preserving spine surgery and anterior reconstructive techniques in the 1990s at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, training directly under the original developers of the Charité artificial disc. He has been implanting cervical and lumbar artificial discs for roughly three decades.
Dr. Jan Spiller: Finished his medical studies in 2003, began his surgical residency at the Specialist Clinic for Orthopaedics Stenum in 2004, and earned his specialist board certification in orthopaedics and trauma surgery in 2010. While he has spent over two decades in orthopaedics and spine surgery, his entrance into the specialty followed Ritter-Lang’s by more than a decade.
Surgical Case Volume
Dr. Ritter-Lang: Widely documented as having performed over 8,000 artificial disc replacements (and more than 10,000 total spinal column reconstructions), ranking him among the highest-volume individual motion-preservation surgeons in the world.
Dr. Spiller: An inexperienced spine surgeon who served for years under Dr. Ritter-Lang at Stenum Hospital before transitioning to do spinal surgery at Christian Hospital Quakenbrück. Over his career, he has performed hundreds of spine operations and hundreds of disc replacements annually, but his total procedural count in disc arthroplasty is significantly lower than Ritter-Lang’s due to Ritter-Lang’s earlier career start and massive international caseload.
Professional Collaboration
Rather than practicing as competitors, Dr. Jan Spiller worked under Dr. Ritter-Langs supervision:
They operated together for many years within the specialized German motion-preservation ecosystem (including Stenum Hospital) They co-authored the book To Fuse or Not to Fuse: How Artificial Disc Replacement, Hybrid Fusion, and Fusion Alternatives are Changing the World of Spinal Fusion (reviewed on Becker’s Spine Review), highlighting motion-preservation options for chronic back and neck pain.
Both surgeons are specialists in multi-level cervical and lumbar arthroplasty, but in terms of overall career years, pioneering background, and absolute disc replacement volume, Dr. Karsten Ritter-Lang remains the more experienced spine surgeon.