[steve55]

ADR will certainly allow you a much shorter recovery time so you can get on with your life, and law school. As you can see in my signature, I had a 3 level cervical adr C4-C6 with Dr Bertagnoli in Bogen. YOu may follow my story in the ADR outcome section as I have posted in great details and very often about my day to day recovery. Im now at the 6 week mark and the last several days Ive been able to work 6 days (maybe could have done 8 hours but didnt want to push it) and doing treadmill all with only alleve as needed, some days without alleve. ABout 25% of fusion patients are back to work in 4 -6 weeks, and with a multi level fusion, Im guessing you may be 3-6 months out of commission. And based on my 1 year's worth of reading hundreds of ADR vs fusion stories (fusion stories can be found at the spine health website by the way), fusion seems to have about a 50-60% long term success rate with the rest still having pain issues as far out as 1-2 years out. Scientifically, the claim is that fusion is as effective as ADR but I call BS on that. Spinehealth is full of long term fusion failures, they are all over the place and not hard to find. So, I said no thanks! On the other hand, try finding cervical ADR failures. YOu will be hard pressed! Though lumbar failures can be found with a little searching. ADR seems to have a 90-95% success rate (basing this on personal observation from all the outcomes IVe been reading). They havnt proven yet that ADR prevents further disc degeneration but I along with the germans and many US doctors feel convinced it will. It only makes sense that a movable disc puts less stress on adjacent discs than a Fused one will.

Plus, Cervical ADR is always reversible either by fusing with the ADR discs in place or by even removing the ADR and fusing. So, you still have options in case it doesnt go well. Once you fuse though, you are done, ...no second options, no second chances. Though I cant recall ever reading a failed Cervical ADR outcome that needed fusing. Cervical ADR's have a little better success rate than lumbar cause they are supporting a 15 pound head and thats about it. Lumbars support your whole upper body weight. Just not alot of stress in the cervical so the ADR discs can do their job nicely as serving as basic moving supports without having to support much weight.

No one can make the decisoon for you. This is just my input here. Weigh it with what others might say. I can say I am VERY PLEASED with my 3 level ADR thus far. Lastly, I chose Prodisc offerred by dr bertagnoli in Bogen because I have read over 40 ADR stories and anytime I saw Prodisc and Bertagnoli in the same sentence, the word SUCCESS always followed. I havnt seen hardly any M6 stenum ADR outcome stories to allow me to judge its efficacy. The M6 and stenum may be as successful, I suspect it is, but because I was unable to read stenum M6 stories I went with what was a KNOWN based on the 40+ success stories I read with Bertagnoli.

One ADR patient I spoke to who spoke to many ADR surgeons was basically told , the choice between the prodisc , prestige, or the M6 is like choosing between a mercedes, BMW, or Audi. They seem to all work equally effectively. But for me, I also like that he prodisc is a simple ball and socket design whereas the M6 relies on alot of internal fiber structures. I like to keep it simple with anything that is to hopefully last a lifetime, so Im glad I chose the prodisc.