[Claudia K.]

Originally Posted by MikeC

Dear All;

This is my first posting on the forum that I fortunately discovered by accident.

I had a 2 level laminotomy in April 2011 and life has been miserable ever since. That was after consulting 3 surgeons who each had a different recomendation "do nothing" to "fusion", so I took the middle road, and have been suffering ever since.

I have seen my surgeon many times for follow up but all I hear is that my MRI is normal. That is a bad joke as I am in constant pain with numbness in both feet as the day goes on.

A friend of mine had mentioned disk replacement surgery in Germany to me at the time and I thought that was a crazy idea. Well two years later I no longer think that it is crazy, just scary.

My friend's son was operated on by Dr Ritter-Lang in 2008 and had good results, although he did mention that it was like a production line. Since I have been reading on the Internet I have come to realize that Ritter-Lang is
controversial.

I have been in touch with the office of Dr Thomas Bierstedt and his contact in
Germany; Malte Petersen. I see that Malte had been associated with Stenum and Dr Ritter-Lang but I have no information on Malte of on Dr Bierstedt, other than that they claim that he is one of the worlds greatest surgeons. They are recommending a 2 level ADR at S1/L5 and L4.

I had a phone call from Dr Bertagnoli's US agent, Tim Mcvair, who was rather
abrupt and had to hang up for another call. He has not returned my e-mail since our telephone conversation. Needless to say, I did not get a "warm and fuzzy" feeling although I cannot rule out this option.

The pain and numbness gets worse, it seems, by the day. I have a phone called scheduled with my physiatrist as HSS later today as I had asked her about ADR and I hope that she will give me some good advice. She has given my about 3 injections but they do not help. I have also tried Gabapentin and Lyrica which don't help either.

My questions are: does anyone have some feedback on Dr Bierstedt as there are very few comments on the forum? I would welcome any other suggestions that you might have.

Thanks for reading.

Mike

Hi Mike,
Sorry you are in so much pain . Just wanted to tell you my experience with Dr. Bierstedt. He operated on my back last November, I have an ADR at L5/S1 and I recovered without any complications and must say that this was my best decision in a long time.
Dr. Bierstedt is very personable and never rushed me, he took his time to answer all my questions and made me feel at ease. The surgery went as planned. Dr. Bierstedt has only 2-3 surgeries on one day, not an asembly line!
I hope that you will feel better soon with whatever decision you make!!
It was worth it for me, almost brings me to tears because I can do things now without major backpain like playing with my kids or just do normal household chores.
Hope I could give you some feedback,
Claudia