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Doc recommends spinal fusion from T12 - S1.
Spine Health | Last Active: Jul 9 11:16am | Replies (101)Comment receiving replies
This is the very problem with this area of medicine, there is often no universally accepted or agreed on treatment method, there is always debate over when to go for surgery and what the surgery should be. It is highly imprecise because it is an unsophisticated area of medicine, they have very little in the way of new procedures or minimally invasive ones that are proven and everybody has a different physical situation so there is little consistency in what works for one or the other. It seems like a crapshoot and so many just do the most conservative route for as long as possible (although that may not have been the best solution either since a situation may degenerate).
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I don't totally agree with that. I think what you're really seeing is that medicine is an art, not a strict science. That doesn't just apply to Orthos's, it's true in all medicine. Every individual doctor will approach cases by their own instincts, intuition, knowledge, experience and diagnostic capabilities. In this case, the ocean between each doctor's recommendation really mandates a third opinion. Maybe switching to a neurosurgeon instead of an ortho.
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@solom174 Please understand that my response is general in nature meant for everyone who reads this thread. In the US, spine surgery devices must be approved for use in patients by the FDA and there are hundreds of studies listed at clinicaltrials.gov. Approval comes after a period of testing with clinical trials. There are many companies manufacturing various devices for spine and other surgeries and research going on all the time on how to improve outcomes and design new components. This gives surgeons many choices in what to use in their surgeries. Often there are different surgical procedures to solve a problem, and the surgeon decides what is best for that patient in their opinion. That answer often is different when you get several opinions from other surgeons. That may be a bit confusing for patients, and it is worth asking about what other choices would apply to their situation as well as the compromises or risks associated with them. All patients are different, and any other health conditions they have come into play in making a decision to go forward with spine surgery. The issues with the spine are complex and there is little capacity for the spinal cord or for spinal discs to heal once they are damaged. Surgery seeks to minimize further damage or functional loss and stabilize the remaining functional ability. Surgery is about choices and compromises. Sometimes these are hard choices. The best situation is not needing surgery. The second best is to balance the benefit of surgery against the consequences or possible negative outcomes of surgery and hopefully the benefit is greater than the outcome would be without surgery. All of that has statistics recorded in studies that surgeons consider when assessing the risk to a particular patient. Surgeons are not trained in every possible implant device that exists. Medicine is always evolving. There may be choices made by the medical center in what is offered as these devices are ordered in advance and held in inventory until needed for surgery and emergency surgery.