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Mr Dan Fagan

Consultant Spinal Surgeon

MBChB MRCS (Eng) FRCS (Tr&Orth)

Practises at: Woodlands Hospital

Mr-Dan-Fagan-Spinal

Personal profile

Mr Fagan is an experienced Consultant Spinal Surgeon in full time private practice at Woodlands Hospital in Darlington, where he is Chairman of the Medical Advisory Committee. He is also Clinical Chair at Circle Health Group and the hospital as part of the Senior Management team, responsible for Clinical Governance and patient safety. He qualified from Bristol University in 1995.

He has a wide range of experience and background in orthopaedic and trauma surgery, with over 25 years of specialisation in spinal surgery. Within this field he has expertise of managing acute spinal cord injuries and complex adult spinal trauma in isolation, or within the sphere of multiple trauma and critically injured or unwell patients. He has managed hundreds of these cases whilst on call for the NHS.

He had detailed Spinal fellowship training and developed his own expertise in treating painful adult spinal conditions and adult scoliosis or deformity correction. His expertise lies also in advanced techniques for adult spinal reconstruction including cervical disc replacement and minimally invasive surgery. 

He was an early adopter and opinion leader of minimal access treatment of osteoporotic fractures of the spine (with vertebral body augmentation) and has well-cited publications in this area. This expertise has led to Mr Fagan to being invited to speak at international meetings and teach these techniques to other consultants. He has also participated in an advisory role to NICE, relating to balloon kyphoplasty. He has published and presented numerous articles across the field of orthopaedics and spinal surgery. 

His practice consists solely of patients with spinal disorders and a large part of his practice is the surgical treatment of conditions giving rise to low back pain, sciatica, and neck pain in adults. Mr Fagan offers a variety of advanced, state of the art techniques which yield good results in carefully selected patients.

Mr Fagan has a comprehensive and sympathetic approach to the diagnosis of your problem. Treatment may involve simple injection treatment carried out as a day case in combination with a multi-disciplinary team rehabilitation approach. If surgery is required, he will offer an operation that is tailored to your needs with audit proven low complication rates.

He specialises and is expert in performing lumbar fusion surgery through tiny incisions under image guidance. This allows for a much faster recovery and lower complication rate, with quick return to work for most patients with severe back pain.

He is also the only surgeon in the region to offer expertise in percutaneous discectomy or “laser discectomy” as it is sometimes called. A traditional open discectomy operation with an incision, post-operative pain is avoided in this day case operation, which is very successful for people suffering from sciatica.

He has been performing percutaneous sacroiliac fusion procedures for many years through minimal access surgery, and has tremendous expertise in managing sacroiliac joint pain. He regularly treats amateur and professional sportsmen with a good track record of a full return to sport with his expertise, and carefully chosen intervention.

He is also an elected member of Stockton Borough Council and sits on the Health and Wellbeing Board and Children and Young Persons Committee to promote the health interests of the local community.

Clinical interests

  • Sciatica (pain, tingling, numbness or weakness in the bottom, back of the leg and/or foot and toes)
  • Spinal deformity
  • Spinal stenosis (space around the spinal cord becoming too narrow and irritating the spinal cord or the nerves branching off it)
  • Low back pain
  • Neck pain
  • Radiculopathy (injury to the nerve roots in the area they leave the spine)
  • Cervical stenosis (a bone disease involving the narrowing of the spinal canal at the level of the neck)
  • Osteoporotic fractures of the thoracic and lumbar spine
  • Minimally invasive spinal fusion
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