Motion diseases and ADR

[Don]

I'll start this as a new discussion. I just wanted some other opinions on this.

I went to a "back treatment" lecture last night and one of the surgeons (who is a senior neurosurgeon at a local hospital) said he feels that ADR is really only a best option in 5 - 6% of patients at this time. He said that if the problem in the s[pine is a "motion disease" ie. arthritis, facet disease, etc., then ADR is probably not the best option, because the motion that causes the pain will be enabled. He says that in his experience, ADR salvages motion, but too often the pain is still enabled with the motion. He also said that the cervical spine is much more understood and it is more accepting of surgery (not his word - I don't remember his exact words) vs the lumbar spine, but the lumbar spine is treated more often with surgery.

He didn't talk much about ADR. He talked a lot about various diagnosis and what they meant. Also about therapy and posture. They had a good therapist there who talked too, but it was very basic stuff, basically an overview of whats available. Most of the audience was sniors and I think they try to stress posture to them. He mention the X-stop or X-spine (?) which I need to look up. It's a fairly new treatment and he said it is only useful for a limited group of patients, but he thinks it will be helpful to them. I wanted to ask a few questions, but there were too many people and too little time.

Don

[Harrison]

Don,

Thx for sharing your insights. I stood on a soapbox many times and expressed my concerns about pathologies of the spine; that is, both patients and doctors may be missing the root cause of the problem. So I like the doc's message, but I wouldn’t call these “motion” diseases. Arthritis syndromes are complex, with some docs stating that there are over 100 types. And that makes the qualification process of ADR even trickier – as we’ve discussed many times. Recall this article:

Prevalence of Lumbar Facet Arthrosis and Its Relationship to Age, Sex, and Race: An Anatomic Study of Cadaveric Specimens.
http://adrsupport.org/eve/forums/a/t...1/m/8421047972

I’d like to see a long term survey that shows the correlation of post-op satisfaction correlated with the number of discs replaced with devices. I’ve noticed that patients with multiple dysfunctional levels have greater pain levels post-op; while also having a greater number of other health problems (may or may not be related to spinal disease).

This observation may also jive with the conclusion from a study I posted in the article library yesterday. This study examined a relationship between the physical deterioration of patients’ spinal discs and correlated the disease state with pain scores. See:

Not all parameters detect relationship between low back pain and MRI findings
http://adrsupport.org/eve/forums/a/t...1/m/2831041782

It’s about time we start looking at the underlying pathologies of the spine. Why don’t we see more articles on this (actually, any would be nice)?

Hi Don,

Thanks for the information on the meeting. I saw an advertisement in our newspaper for a seminar/meeting on backs. In your opinion is this the new way to enlighten the patient or a marketing approach to sell the practice?

Was it worth your time to attend this meeting? I thought about going but ended up not being able to make the meeting. Plus I had a lot of my own questions which I knew could not be answered in a group format.