Category: General Questions

Sometimes you have to restrict patients that have had multi-level lumbar fusions in their activity. In general, once somebody heals, pain is more their guide than anything else. So if they feel fine, they can do whatever they want.

For most patients that have had surgery in their neck, they have very little in the way of limitations once they’ve healed. And they can range from none to just common sense precautions.

One of the things I found helpful in my practice for patients that are understandably concerned or or hesitant to have surgery is when possible to give them an opportunity to talk to one of my patients who has had a similar surgery in the past, ideally recently, and then they can go over and discuss what their experiences were like.

And often if they see a patient in in the office who just had surgery a couple weeks before and is walking around, fine, obviously sometimes with pain, that sets a lot of their fears at ease.

Surgery in the neck, when performed from the front, and patients only need one or two levels, is one of the most successful surgeries of all surgeries performed. What that means is after a patient typically has a herniated disc in the neck that ultimately they need surgery for, if years later they get another herniated disc.

It’s very common for them, even though they were initially very scared about surgery, to want to proceed to surgery very quickly simply because it’s usually a quick outpatient procedure with a high success rate.

When I go about diagnosing a condition, it’s usually a systematic approach. First of all, assessing and talking to the patient. A lot of patients, you walk out into the room, you can tell exactly what’s wrong with them because certain patients with certain herniated discs will sit in very distinct ways. And you know, from the doorway that they have a herniated disc.

Usually the history gives you a good sense of what’s bothering the patient and where the source of the problem is. The valuation can assess beyond the physical exam, to different x-rays, CT scans, and ultimately, of course, probably the single best test as an MRI by.