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Artificial disc replacement surgery recommended vs fusion
Spine Health | Last Active: Dec 26, 2021 | Replies (6)Comment receiving replies
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.
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@sb4ca Thank you for your update. You can send the link to this discussion to your nephew. Here are a few other discussions that also discuss thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS). Your nephew can read these, but it he wants to post, he needs to join Connect. I will see his posts since I watch these and spine posts to help out where I can. Often TOS is a diagnosis of elimination. There is surgery for TOS which can be a bit extreme like taking out the first rib or some of the scalene muscles on the side of the neck. Hopefully the doctor will want to try long term physical therapy, and hopefully they will be familiar with myofascial release because it helps TOS a lot without causing further scar tissue from surgery. To call my attention in a discussion, if he posts @jenniferhunter, it will send me a separate e mail about the post. I'm happy to help.
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/thoracic-outlet-syndrome-1/
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/help-finding-care-for-arterial-thoracic-outlet-syndrome/
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/long-term-forearm-pain-and-numbness/
There are lymph nodes all over the body which is normal, and the question is why are they hard? I'm wondering if they are swollen and blocked with fluid. There are physical therapists and massage therapists that do lymphatic drainage massage which is very similar to myofascial release. The doctors may have other concerns as lymph nodes can become involved if a person has cancer and it spreads through the lymphatic system and gets trapped in a lymph node. I'm not saying that to scare you, but your doctors may be thinking something along those lines. My husband had melanoma on his hand, and they mapped the lymph nodes in his arm pit with blue dye they injected in his hand right before they did surgery to remove the cancer from his hand so they knew which were the closest ones. They biopsied those during surgery, and luckily they were clear because the cancer had not spread, otherwise, treatment and outcomes could be very different because melanoma is very difficult to treat if it has spread. The question needs to be answered for you. Sometimes diagnosing issues is like a big jig saw puzzle to be figured out. If they do not find a problem, physical therapy may be able to help with MFR to get tissue and body fluids moving again.
If you do also have TOS, hopefully your orthopedic surgeon will collaborate with a TOS specialist in your care. TOS just takes a long time to try to fix, maybe years, and you need to change habits and posture that affects it. Stress is also a big factor, and is also for me. It will make my body brace and tighten up, yanking up the first rib and affecting my ability to breathe normally. Some recovery is physical and some is emotional to get past the things that are triggers for stress and learn coping methods.
With a complex multilevel spine problem, you may find differing opinions on ways to fix this from different surgeons. Are you also considering other spine specialist opinions or neurosurgery opinions or specialists at another facility?