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Old 07-05-2021, 11:44 AM
annapurna annapurna is offline
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Do you know the degree of annular tearing? Are you leaking fluid out of the disk or is it primarily internal tearing?

There have been some ideas suggested if the disk is still retaining fluid. Those ideas all revolve around injecting some kind of healing agent like stem cells into the disk, like a discogram, to try to heal the structure from the inside. There's been very little work to my knowledge and the nature of the treatment makes a blind study inadvisable so there will always be some degree of skepticism over the idea.

IDET and similar thermal treatments to thermally treat the annulus have been proposed and, to use the joke, quickly disposed having largely been proven to be non-useful and potentially damaging.

If you had asked about this maybe a few months after your car accident, there would be a chance of healing the tear, albeit slowly. Saying you still have pain 2 years later makes it much less likely you'll get natural healing.

If you have an MRI to reference, how much disk height did you lose in the affected disk? Is the disk still bright on the MRI (still hydrated) or turning dark (dehydrating and losing strength)? Those questions might guide you towards a bigger intervention now, like ADR or fusion, instead of a minor intervention. If your disk is apparently giving up the ghost, it may not be something that can be turned around and made functional.
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Laura - L5S1 Charitee
C5/6 and 6/7 Prodisc C
Facet problems L4-S1
General joint hypermobility

Jim - C4/5, C5/6, L4/5 disk bulges and facet damage, L4/5 disk tears, currently using regenerative medicine to address

"There are many Annapurnas in the lives of men" Maurice Herzog
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