spinal fusions anyone?
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at
12:00 am
Dolly asked:
I have arthuritis and 2 buldging discs, colapsed discs, also central spinal stenosis as well as degeneritive disc disease. A double fusion was recomended. I am 51. Did it help you if you had it, and for how long? I am in the chicago area.
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I have arthuritis and 2 buldging discs, colapsed discs, also central spinal stenosis as well as degeneritive disc disease. A double fusion was recomended. I am 51. Did it help you if you had it, and for how long? I am in the chicago area.
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Tagged with: Buldging Discs • Disc Disease • Fusion
Filed under: Other - Diseases
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I have had spinal fusion of my cervical spine and I am doing much better now and expect to remain so for a long time to come. The pain is gone and I feel fortunate. I would suggest asking your physician to answer your questions fully before I would procede with any surgery that I still had questions about. You should come to the decision to have the surgery after careful discussion and after getting ALL of your questions answered to the point where YOU feel comfortable about doing it. Good luck!
P.S. One of the biggest questions to be answered would be: Is your quality of life going to be better with surgery? Will your pain be lessened – and to what degree? Write ALL your questions down and bring them with you.
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These surgeries often do not help. They can even make you worse. Please get a 2nd and even a 3rd opinion. Take this type of surgery ‘very seriously’.
Best wishes.
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I am a radiologic technologist, and I do a whole lot of MRIs. Weekly, I scan people who have already had the spinal surgery which is going to make them “all better.” Yet, here they are back at radiology having more scans because they are no better off and sometimes even worse off. I do not see the same phenomena with neck surgery. But, for some reason, lumbar surgery has a high rate of failure. I also have 3 HNPs with DDD and spinal stenosis. The only time I would consider lumbar spine surgery is if I thought only death could be worse. I would make sure I have tried EVERYTHING else….physical therapy, exercise, water aerobics, massage, acupuncture etc. Once you have spinal surgery, you cannot “take it back.” You are stuck with your decision. Of course, I could be biased, because I never see the patients who have had successful surgery. They don’t come in for scans because they are “better.” But I have seen enough to know that I would really have to be bedridden and totally out of options to consider surgery. Good luck to you!