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What are people's experiences with spinal fusion surgery?
Spine Health | Last Active: Jun 30 3:25pm | Replies (222)Comment receiving replies
Sorry its so long. I am from Pennsylvania. I will share my first and only back surgery thus far, nay feedback would be appreciated. I had L5 leaning on sciatica and caused me excruciating pain 24 x 7. I could not even walk to Men's room. After MRI etc. I was told that L4 L5 Fusion is the answer. I did lots of research and tapped into a college friend who had same surgery. So I went with it. The sciatica went away immediately however the pain level never went below 8 - 13 for past 7 months. I was referred to Neuro Surgeon for " another pair of eyes". S0, its a compression fracture of L5 from metal spacer. The Neuro was very empathetic and proceeded to inform me he performed same surgery from same doctor who performed my first surgery. Neuro states he needs to cut front and back....remove old hardware and install stronger hardware. What? TY for whoever reads this. I am in pain.
Replies to "Sorry its so long. I am from Pennsylvania. I will share my first and only back..."
@jraffuel, I'm sorry you have gone through all this. I'm new on this board, are you allowed to name the doctor that did your first surgery? I have severe spinal stenosis l4-l5. I've been hem hawing around because I know how important it is to choose the right doctor. I've been to two different surgeons but want a third neurosurgeon to take a look. Are you allowed to name the doctors? What part of PA are you in? I'm in the "Philadelphia region".
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Thank you for sharing your story. I'm sorry about the pain you are having.
A neurosurgeon wants to fuse my L4-5 too. My personal feeling about doing the lumbar fusion isn't "enthusiastic." I don't know what to do so surgery hangs over me while the problems don't go away. However, the problems don't seem to be getting any worse.
I had a repeat MRI recently which was good news from my perspective. My lumbar spine doesn't appear to being getting "progressively worse" as the neurosurgeon used to say.
My neurosurgeon hasn't called me yet about my recent MRI results but I can read the MRI report. The MRI report from a year ago detailed everything that was wrong with my lumbar spine. My neurosurgeon showed me the images and pointed out all the problems. The neurosurgeon emphasized synovial cyst formation, severe spinal stenosis and atrophy of paraspinal muscles just to name a few of the problems.
My recent MRI doesn't report much of anything:
FINDINGS/IMPRESSION:
1. The synovial cyst at L4-L5 is decreased in size since March 2022 and is now barely measurable. Regardless, there is still severe canal narrowing at this level.
2. Remainder of the examination is unchanged. Paraspinous tissues demonstrate no mass lesion.
My neurosurgeon seems agreeable to postpone surgery:
"Given his improvement, absence of debilitating pain, in his stable if not improving lumbar paresthesias, I would not rush to do an operation and we will not try and talk him into it since he is not particularly eager about it.
We have mutually agreed to update his MRI and x-rays as well as get a DEXA scan to look at his bone density. We will hold off on any operation this month (we had saved him a date) and see him back in 4 months."
I'm willing to wait but I wish the problems would go away!