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Artificial disc replacement surgery recommended vs fusion
Spine Health | Last Active: Dec 26, 2021 | Replies (6)Comment receiving replies
@sb4ca It was that confident comment by your doctor that it was your neck that made me think that they were so sure and confident about it that they were not looking for other issues that may also be involved. Since this is all new from your description of the MRIs, something like TOS would be very easy to miss and then you could go through surgery and a long recovery and may still have issues with the same symptoms. I had to get 6 spine surgical opinions before one of them (at Mayo) got it right. All of them could see that my spinal cord was compressed, but only one understood why that was giving me what seemed like random pain and muscle contractions all over my body. The others refused surgery because they didn't understand the connection of the symptoms with imaging, and didn't want a patient who might have some other big problem with a potential poor outcome affecting their success rate. One suggested I could have MS, and that was completely wrong and he didn't want to make my problems worse, so he bailed. The doctors who recognized that I had TOS were neurologists and thoracic surgeons and my spine neurosurgeon at Mayo who was collaborating with the thoracic surgeon to figure out what was causing the major issues and they agreed it was the cervical stenosis, and they they also authorized PT to treat the TOS and the recovery from spine surgery. My TOS was missed by 2 orthopedic hand surgeons.
If you do have TOS, spine surgery will probably affect it when the scar tissue tightens. That was true for me with a spine surgery incision pretty close to the area involved with TOS. PT and myofacial release helps a lot.
Are you planning to get other surgical opinions before you decide on your treatment?
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That was a good article and I sent it to my nephew whose many many doctors have now said they believe he has TOS. He's been dealing with neurological issues for months now and they've ruled out many other conditions, like spine compression. Your symptoms that you described sound very similar to his and next step is meeting a neurologist to rule out other causes. If that's a clean bill of health, he goes back to the vascular surgeon for treatment of TOS. Would you mind if I gave him your call name here so he could post and find you, or how does that work? In terms of myself, its mainly been my right side mostly affected, with numbness and nerve pain traveling across shoulder and back of neck and the collarbone along with unusual symptoms on left. I didn't mention this before because its not specific to spine surgery, but the second opinion doc and his PA found hard lymph nodes on my left side when I brought up the epidural hadn't helped that area. They ordered a stat CT of my chest and I'll get the results from 1st doctor after hours tomorrow. So in the end this could be two different conditions, but praying no nodes found in thoracic area.