Personal Profile
He was then accepted into the German orthopaedic training programme, and wanting to gain more international experience he was accepted as the first German registrar on the advanced orthopaedic training programme in Australia where Mr Kotrba spent almost 2 years.
He returned to Germany and finished his orthopaedic training in 1998. In January 1999 Mr Kotrba was offered his first consultancy and was also appointed acting director of the department by the end of that year.
He then changed to the university teaching hospital in Lubeck, Germany, as a consultant in order to help and set up the new department of Trauma, Joint and Spinal Surgery. Mr Kotrba also dealt with a lot of sports injuries and arthroscopic procedures which is his second line of interest.
As his main interest is in spinal surgery he did a travelling AO fellowship in 2001 in Newcastle upon Tyne and in Oxford. In August 2004 he was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the then Mayday University Hospital in Croydon, specialising in spinal procedures, including Kyphoplasty and minimally invasive shoulder repairs, which he started in 1996.
He is continuously increasing the number of minimally invasive procedures, using minimal access surgery wherever possible, for example percutaneous / mini-open spinal fusions and stabilisations or percutaneous Kyphoplasty procedures for spinal fractures.
He is international faculty for Balloon Kyphoplasty, which he introduced in this area in 2006/2007. He and his unit are now one of the main users of Balloon Kyphoplasty in the UK. He is also chairing international meetings and teaching the procedure at the University of Salzburg in Austria and at the University of Leiden in Holland.
