Sleep Apnea "Cervical Spinal Stenosis"

[biffnoble]

Hi Fortitudine:

Thanks for the words of encouragement. You are so lucky that you can maintain a reasonable QOL while staving off invasive procedures!

In talking to 3 and 4 level c-spine ADR recipients, they indicated there was little psychological or sleep disturbance prior to surgery. In some cases there was pain and mechanical dysfunction. In one case a patient was within days of quadraplegia w/extensive muscle wasting, and yet until he had an MRI he was oblivious to his precarious situation. He luckily managed to save his life literally overnight via 4 level c-spine ADR. Generally the ADR folks I've spoken to have been very rational w/solid affect considering the trauma of spine disease.

Interestingly in 2005 there have been a spate of articles in the literature dealing w/the relationship between c-spine compression, the brain-stem and CFS/FMS for example. google: hypoperfusion. So science seems to be "catching" up.

Here is an intriguing statement:
"...myelomalacia complicate(s) the treatment but certainly (it) is a concern on the compression your cervical spine is doing to the medulla ...a kind of another indication for surgical treatment indication." Dr. Luiz Pimenta.

Who BTW is a generous and contentious practitioner,
and IMHO one of the "overlooked" master surgeons in the ADR space. His cervical ADR is the PCM.

Surgeons deal w/mechanical failures not "psychological" ones.

The brain-stem is essential to life and is a highly complex interface between the brain and the spine cord. How does the medulla "express" "mild" distress of the kind produced by the "traction"/"compression" constantly being applied by c-spine central stenosis? Is the evidence of disease simply provided by overt physical symptoms/losses or are there subtler manifestions of c-spine pathologyy?

As you say Fortitudine: "...the spine is really one of the new frontiers."

So I guess we're all pioneers/guinea pigs in this together.

Take care.

[Fortitudine]

The stuff you are talking about would possibly tie in with the interesting effects of caffeine and cold...

These substances which affect the CNS definitely do exacerbate cord compression symptoms. When I asked my NS about that, he said, "We don't know why."

Hmmmm....