Hello Harrison,
Thanks for the warm welcome and concern for my case.
I basically have some sort of degenerative disc disease at almost all levels in the spine. Those that are particularly bad are in the lumbar region, with the worse ones being at the bottom and lessening in severity as they go up. So, L5-S1 is almost totally destroyed and the vertebrae are almost (if not actually in some places) bone on bone. L5-L4 and L4-L3 are the next worse and borderline in whether it is a good idea to replace them or not with ADRs at this time.
The language used to describe the facet joint condition at the L5-S1 level is "There is mild bilateral facet degeneration, causing mild indentation of the anterior thecal sac, partial effacement of the proximal S1 nerve root sheathes in a subarticular recesses, and moderate bilateral forminal stenosis."
I also believe that one of the doctors did tell me the facet degeneration was in his view a level 1. (IF I remember correctly.) The two German surgeons I have seen have indicated this should not be a problem, while as I have said, the US ones mostly have refused ADR for me on the facet issue. So, as you mention some have facet joint pain and some don’t after surgery without regard to the state of the facet joint prior to surgery. So I am gambling that I will be one of the lucky ones that have little or no facet joint pain. The German surgeons have extensive experience but it may have missed their attention that those with little disc height like mine almost ALWAYS have severe facet joint pain in all cases. As I mentioned, supposedly there are US studies out there that prove this point—with the little height I have left others who had ADR with the same small height—95% suffered from severe facet joint pain that could not be alleviated. I have yet to actually see these studies or the supposed class action suit either. I have read that there are class action suits out there but I have not seen the specifics—that small disc space is one of the exclusion factors not recognized by the disc manufacturers at first and many who had ADR should not have had it because of this reason.
Thanks again for any help or further insight you can give.
Matthew
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