Month: March 2026

Osteoporosis is just the word that means softening of the bones. The risk in the spine involves spontaneous compression fractures or spine fractures that occur without any kind of incident or, spine fractures that occur with very minor incidents, such as a mild fall.

Arthritis of the spine is something that’s very common. In fact, it’s odd not to see some type of arthritis in the spine of people as they get over the age of 40. It has to be taken in consideration to somebody with a spine problem, whether it’s pain or dysfunction in terms of how much it’s contributing and how it should be addressed at the time of surgery.

A lot of times, some of it’s inconsequential or there, and doesn’t need to be addressed. Sometimes the arthritis itself can be the problem. It needs to be addressed.

The spinal infections can be a serious problem. Often they require surgical intervention, sometimes even emergent surgical intervention. Often they require more than one surgery. They typically require a combined team approach with the surgeon, the internal medicine doctor, and the infectious disease doctor to try and get rid of the infection.

It’s also not uncommon for them to need surgery later once the infection clears to reconstruct the spine.

I often get asked a lot by my patients, for their cervical hernia disc, which they should pick an artificial disc replacement or a fusion. Certainly the trend has been more towards artificial disc replacement over the years. It’s hard to compare these two very, very successful procedures over a 10 year span.

There just aren’t that many patients that we can look at at a 10 years to see who’s really doing better. It’s compounded by the fact that both procedures have a very high success rate. The procedures are almost identical in terms of risk technique.

Everybody can get a fusion. It’ll always fit. You can always see well enough to do a fusion.

A disc replacement can be a little finicky as to who it will fit in and who you can visualize on X-ray well enough to put a disc replacement in.