Better Procedure?
Floyd Reed thinks so.
Floyd had spine surgery in 2006 stemming for a fall out of tree when he was 7. At 33 he finally rid himself of the pain associated with the injury.
So what happened? He was driving with his family when a tractor-trailer hit them. Everybody else in the car was all right. But for Reed, the pain ignited all over again.
A ruptured disc occurs when the relatively soft tissue that provides cushioning between the vertebrae blows out, causing the kind of pain and numbness that Reed experienced.
The standard operation, which Reed received last year, was to "fuse" two discs. That involves removing the ruptured disc tissue between two vertebrae, inserting the bone tissue of a cadaver in the space, and bolting the whole thing together.
That stabilizes the disc and makes the pain go away temporarily. But it takes away flexibility and places greater stress on the discs immediately above and below the fused vertebrae. There's a 25 percent chance the patient will need more spinal surgery within a decade.
The loss of flexibility also leaves the patient more susceptible to injury - say, in an accident involving a tractor-trailer.
A new procedure involves a device called a Prestige Cervical Disc. That replacement disc actually consists of two metal parts, which are screwed into the upper and lower vertebrae. And in the middle, where the disc material had previously been located, the two metal pieces fit together with a small, convex bulge inserted into a dimple on the other metal plate.
This allows for far more flexibility than fusing the vertebrae, taking pressure off the surrounding discs. Reed said the recovery from surgery was a lot easier with the new procedure than with the previous one.
"I'd recommend it to anybody," he said.
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