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Spinal fusion: Hardware removal

Spine Health | Last Active: Mar 20 12:37pm | Replies (32)

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@sapphireblue

Thank you for your response. This is very helpful. Tomorrow will be my 1-year anniversary of having my Lower Spinal Back Fusion Surgery L4-S1. Like you I am in more pain than before. I have been on pain meds up until last weekend and they were not helping at all. My Surgeon wants me to go see a Pain Management doctor and I refuse to go after my 1st initial visit. They wanted to do the injections on me that I tried way before having my surgery and none of them worked. Since my surgery, my Surgeon has had me on Tramadol 50mg tablets 3 times a day (that are Opioids), and I was terrified to take them and slowly over time reduced the dosage myself and I was only taking a 1/2 a pill once a day along with two other prescriptions he gave to me Gabapentin 300mg Capsules (3 time's a day) and Cyclobenzaprine 10mg tablets for muscle spasms as often as needed.
In the beginning, before surgery he informed me I will not need to have physical therapy. But after a few months I asked him again and he informed me yes if I wanted to he will have me go to physical therapy. So I did it for 8 weeks and I was not feeling better at all. After I had physical therapy, the next day I would be in a lot more pain.
I ice my back everyday. Even when I sit still my lower back is hurting. It NEVER stops.
On my last appointment with my surgeon, I begged him to take out the equipment, that it hurts and I'm in worse pain than prior to surgery. He told me he could not do that. All of my equipment is Titanium. How do we go about getting the equipment removed? HELP PLEASE HELP!!!

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Replies to "Thank you for your response. This is very helpful. Tomorrow will be my 1-year anniversary of..."

@sapphireblue Welcome to Connect. I have not heard of spine surgeons willing to remove spine hardware except during revision surgery that likely places new hardware in place. If you cannot have hardware removed, there may be treatments to reduce the symptoms. There are Environmental Medicine doctors who treat metal immune responses and this field of medicine was started by a practice in Texas call the Environment Health Center Dallas. Here are 2 discussions where patents are discussing immune reaction problems with metal implants and a member who is undergoing treatment with the Environmental Health Center Dallas. Here are the links:

Joint REplacements - "Is there a hospital or Dr in US who understand metal allergies in TKR?"
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/is-there-a-hospital-or-dr-in-us-who-understand-metal-allergies-in-tkr/
Spine Health - "Metallosis of cervical disc replacement "
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/metallosis-of-cervical-disc-replacement/

I hear you, sounds horrible. Unfortunately puts you in the position of having to hunt down the right answer and having to go get multiple opinions. You need to do what makes sense so if you can interview several surgeons to get opinions and find out if it is possible. Fusion is not an optimal solution, we need better more innovative procedures.

I don’t think the hardware can be taken out. It’s now scarred down and would probably be dangerous