@chrisanon My Mayo surgeon said he does a first cervical surgery as anterior. If there is another surgery, he does that posterior because he doesn't want to introduce more scar tissue into an already operated area. To prevent a staff infection, I was asked pre-operatively to use the antibiotic ointment mupiroicin in my nostrils twice a day for a number of days as a prevention. I did not have any surgical infections. That works very well when I get sinus infections and if not treated, that will spread to my lungs, so I do this as needed and physically one side of my chest doesn't expand as well, so I have to watch it. My doctors are good with that. The surgical path is usually best chosen by the surgeon and depends on where the problem is that needs to be accessed. FYI, I was a scientist first doing biological research at the University of Chicago.

A wound vac is not a good thing to live with and surgeries for clearing infections. I know a lady who went through that with an ankle fracture. It is troubling to hear of an operating room spreading infections to 5 different patients on the same day. Yikes! I certainly would not go back there for more surgery. These are all things to bring up for discussion about how this is prevented when you are planning for surgery. You are just a few years older than I am and yes, we live in the same area. It is a beautiful drive to Mayo and across the Mississippi River bluffs. I just love going there, but have no medical reason to go. I did go for a conference related to my mentorship here.

FYI, I just heard that one of Mayo's excellent neurosurgeons, Mohamed Bydon, will be moving to the University of Chicago to head a new neurosurgery department there. That being said, I have no idea if he is available for patient surgeries. When I was picking a surgeon, it was between him and Dr. Fogelson and I went with Dr. Fogelson because of his research interests. I worked for a neuro-anatmist at U of C years ago, so I was accustomed to looking for medical literature online.

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I wanted to add some more comments after re-reading about your esophageal issues. One question I would ask about spinal hardware would be how to avoid issues there. There are some types of hardware that do not use a frontal spine plate, and instead the screws go into it in an angle for a fusion. I have no hardware because my fusion was done with only a bone disk spacer. However, I needed only one level C5/C6, and this is probably not an option for multi-level fusion. One question would be if a plate could be removed later? I don't know if a surgeon would do that, but it needs discussion.