Spinal Fusion Procedure Relieves Back Pain
250,000 Americans have the surgery each year; new procedure cuts recovery time.
Nov. 24, 2008— -- Fifteen years ago, Stacey Hermann hyperextended her back while tubing behind a motorboat. Though she's been in pain ever since, the 43-year-old mother of two from Ridgewood, N.J., put off back surgery.
"It's horrible pain and constant," she said. "That's the worst part -- constant pain. So you're thinking about it all the time."
Each year more than 250,000 Americans undergo spine fusion surgery in an effort to stop the pain. And on a recent November morning, Hermann decided she too needed to fix the problem, once and for all.
At 7:40 a.m., surgeons at the Hudson Crossing Surgical Center in Fort Lee, N.J., began operating on Hermann using a new, minimally invasive approach to spine fusion called AxiaLIF. Instead of opening up her back, most of the work was done through a small incision beside her tailbone. This means doctors do not have to cut muscles or nerves and patients are likely to recovery faster, with much less pain.
Unlike traditional techniques, with AxiaLIF, surgeons don't actually see the back disc they are operating on. Instead, each time they move their surgical tools inside Hermann's back, they call for an X-ray to ensure they're in exactly the right place.
Over the course of the procedure, the surgeons took more than 200 X-rays of Hermann's lower spine. Dr. Roy Vingan, the neurosurgeon leading the team, said the total radiation exposure is less than what she would get from a CT scan.
Working on the lowest part of Hermann's spine, surgeons removed the center of a diseased disc and replaced it with bone growth material. Then, with a half-inch incision in her back, they add screws that fuse the disc space and stabilize the area. After a little more than an hour, the surgery is over. The operation lasted about a third of the time of conventional spine fusion surgery.
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