Doc,
Sorry about your pain, I hope we can help you with your next steps. In no particular order, some responses to you questions and concerns:
- Patients from all over the US and world pass through this community. Most are considering motion preservation procedures, but many are disqualified (rightfully so) because of severe arthritis, spondy, etc and opt for spinal fusion.There are appr. 20 docs of various fields that are members here too.
- Please take a look at the topic called ADR Risks, Complications, Disqualifications in Arthroplasty Central. Also, if you’ve not already seen my
presentation at SAS, you’ll find a nice summary of the continuous survey of ADR patient outcomes; it includes other germane issues like complications, insurance, diagnostics, etc.
- When you can, please tell us a bit more about your spinal history; include that in your signature too.
- If you search the forums on biacuplasty, you will find a number of relevant topics, like
this one.
For what it's worth, IMHO, the weakest area in spinal orthopedics (and for that matter, medicine) is in diagnostics! Within this community, there are many members who have DDD with comorbidities that are not “necessarily” linked; but the ones with fibro or other autoimmunity conditions do not do as well post-operatively as others. I'd like to hear your perspective on this...
Hope this helps get you started…lots to read here!