Why does Dr. Marnay never get any mention when he invented the prodisc? Is it because he is not a squeaky wheel and doesn't market heavily in the U.S.? I don't know. The guy invented the Prodisc and there is one patient who has posted here that has four of them in his spine. Both Stenum and Alpha (now debunked and I wish we all knew the real behind the scene story there as I bet it would be a good read) market heavily here in the U.S. Why do we not here anything about Zeegers anymore after Alpha went belly up? A few years ago, people were deciding between Zeegers and Dr. B. I know neither Zeegers nor Dr. B were implicated in the lawsuits and it was Dekkers that was misdiagnosing MRI's to fatten his pockets via unnecessary surgeries and has a slew of lawsuits against him and his medical license was revoked. (hearing that made me sick) I realize marketing is an important aspect of a business, and folks, these are businesses and Stenum surgeons don't work for free even though they may have non profit status which is new to me, I didn't know that. If either of these surgeons are judging your facets just by MRI, then that is bad and there is hard science to show that you can't judge facet pain just by MRI image. You can see enlargement and degeneration but can't judge pain. Heck, my surgeon said my facets didn't look that bad on the MRI and they fused when I had the dynesys in the first 3 months as they were bone on bone which facilitated the arthrosis of them.
There was a time when I mistakenly thought I was an ADR candidate (I'm not because of facet problems but could be a hybrid case, I'm not sure yet) and I did as much research as I could and there were some horrible accounts listed here regarding stenum and on a few other boards regarding stenum (I particularly remember Harrison responding that he was horrified by what he was reading and some of the stuff was stomach churning) Use the search and read them all and you will see many old accounts on ADR support. People were put into groups of 6 at stenum (sounds like animal herding or assembly line preparation at the Ford plant). One lady described all the members of her group having poor outcomes. I've had jobs where I sucked the first year and got better in time so maybe that is the case. I remember problem being with the charite and they use the maverick and perhaps they have gotten really good with it. I do remember hearing that Stenum didn't use imagining to place the disc and did 6 surgeries in a day and Dr. B took his time and did a max of 2 or 3 a day and he would tap at the disc to get it just right. That seemed like a big plus as studies have shown placement is key with ball and socket ADR. This is just what I read on the board so who knows for sure. I mean, the pope can get an account and post on here and we wouldn't know it was him so you have to treat internet info with a bit of skepticism until you know you can trust the source and confirm the message isn't self serving and skewed by the ever present profit motive.
This is the thread that stays in my mind despite reading it years ago.
http://www.adrsupport.org/forums/sho...rrified&page=3