Spinal Discs, some information

[alex_778 0]

I have read with horror someone saying that their surgeon has said that a disc will heal up.......................aaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhh. Which particular JuJu Man training school did this numpty go to? Disc do not and cannot heal, period.

A disc is like a thin rubber ring donut that is full of a soft jelly like material made up mainly of water. During normal operation the jelly acts as a shock absorber for the spine being absorbed outwards thru the donut during a normal day. At night whilst you are lying down sleeping the body replenishes this jelly like liquid for the next day.

When a disc bulges it is due to a weakness, the bulge may touch some of the nerves running along behind the spine. These nerves go to various parts of the body which is why you feel sensation or pain away from the area of injury.

When a disc bursts the jelly is pushed out, a bit like toothpaste out of a toothpaste tube, and this jelly touches the nerve.......the more you jump up and down, the more jelly gets pushed out, the more pain you feel.

They do not heal, you need the presence of blood to heal things, discs do not have any blood vessels in them so they cannot heal.

In some cases the pressure on nerves can cause you to lose control of muscles. This can mean you are confined to a wheelchair because you cannot walk anymore or that an arm dangles at your side.

If the pain you are experiencing is in your shoulder and arms it is indicative of a damaged cervical disc (neck). If the pain is in your leg it is indicative of a damaged Lumbar disc. If the pain is in the right hand side of your body it is indicative of a right side bulge or burst on the left a left side bulge or burst. Sometimes C-Spine may result in lower body pain as well as arm pain.

To fix the problem there is IDET, fusion, screw fittings and artificial discs.

Personally my option is the disc method, but you need to go to Germany because they are the worlds best. I have found these guys:

http://www.alphaklinik.com/en/hoogland

http://www.getadr.com/index.asp

http://adrbertagnoli.com/

Its not cheap, but I like walking, running and jumping........and life is short enough.


I FOUND THIS ARTICLE




From lef, Jeff Gibson and Fabien Bitan.
(Photo: Christian Witkin)

Medical Miracle #6
Problem: Forty-six-year-old Hollywood stuntman. Career-threatening back pain. Traditional spinal fusion not an option. Decides to try risky, experimental disk replacement.
Doctor: Fabien Bitan
Patient: Jeff Gibson



Jeff Gibson is a 46-year-old stuntman who has spent half his life falling from heights in films like RoboCop 3 and Batman Forever, and that’s just when he’s on the clock; in his twenties, he competed in gymnastics and on trampoline, and in his spare time he skydives. “I never looked at any of it as dangerous,” he says. “I just like the freedom up there. Trampoline, I get maybe a second—with skydiving, you get 60 or 70 seconds.” Falling is also his livelihood, of course, and the years have taken their toll. In the early nineties, Gibson slipped a disk lifting something at home, starting down a path of lower-back deterioration that was only made worse by the impact of all those professional and recreational falls. He spent a decade nursing increasing pain from his lower vertebrae until finally it got so bad that his career was in jeopardy. “It would take me twenty seconds to get up if I was bending over,” he recalls. “It wasn’t fun.”



Friends in the business with similar back problems had gone in for traditional spinal fusions, in which the damaged disk is simply taken out and the two neighboring vertebrae locked together. The result is less pain, but at a price. “As soon as you get a fusion, you start deteriorating the disk above and below it and lose motion,” Gibson says. For a stuntman, losing any ability to move or twist his body wasn’t an option. Instead, Gibson put off what seemed like the inevitable until an MRI showed two vertebrae almost next to each other, with nearly all the essential “jelly” in the middle squeezed out. Waiting was no longer an option: If the excess jelly found its way to his spinal cord, Gibson could be in for still more excruciating pain, and perhaps permanent nerve damage.



There was, however, another choice: spinal-disk replacement, a procedure pioneered in Europe in the eighties that was slowly snaking its way through the FDA-approval process here. Gibson, who had found out about the procedure by searching the Internet, tracked down Fabien Bitan, a French-born orthopedic surgeon working at Beth Israel Medical Center who had worked on one of the first disk-replacement cases during his residency in Paris. Bitan was supervising the FDA trials of the surgery in the northeastern United States, and the surgeon confirmed that replacing Gibson’s bad disk with a plastic-and-metal prosthesis might be indicated in his case. Gibson was so determined to have the procedure that he waited in agony for another six months for a new phase of trials that guaranteed he wouldn’t get stuck in a control group. Finally, in August 2001, Bitan ushered Gibson into the OR.



No two disk replacements are ever quite the same: Bitan didn’t know going in how difficult removing Gibson’s decayed disk would be, or how much danger there would be of hitting nearby nerves or the spinal cord. Bitan also couldn’t tell what precise size the new disk should be, so a variety of replacements were on hand. For a perfect fit, Bitan relied not just on his eyes but on real-time X-ray scanning; everyone in the OR was wearing radiation protection. The artificial disk has tiny teeth that lock it between the vertebrae as Bitan delicately hammers it into place; the vertebrae and scar tissue eventually hold the new disk in position. “This is very demanding,” Bitan says. “If the implant is not positioned properly, it might be displaced after just a few days—or, in the long run, the prosthesis might not function properly and there could be chronic back pain.”


Six weeks after surgery, Gibson smashed through a door and landed flat on a marble floor on ‘Third Watch.’ “No problem,” he says.


Gibson noticed a difference right away. “When I woke up I felt great,” he says. “The pain in my stomach”—the disk replacement is done with an incision in the abdomen—“was nothing compared to the pain I’d had in my back for ten years.” Six weeks after the surgery, he took his new disk out for a spin on the set of Third Watch, smashing through a glass door and landing flat onto a marble floor. “No problem,” he says. And if you watched the opening scene of Law & Order on May 11, you saw Gibson fall five stories—on fire.



In October 2004, the FDA approved the procedure, and although it isn’t right for everyone—patients with scoliosis or osteoporosis, for example, aren’t eligible—Gibson is thoroughly satisfied with his equipment upgrade. In addition to his stunts, “I still skydive, scuba dive, and race cars,” Gibson says. “I’ve done everything I can to break this thing, and it hasn’t broken yet.”


Medical Miracle #7: A Heart-Stopping Pregnancy

[alex_778 0]

And just so we are clear, I am not a Medical Doctor. I did a year of a Nurse Degree and hold some other degrees. For my own benefit I have read extensively on this subject and have become what the medical profession call 'The expert patient' for my own particular injury. I would advise anyone having any problems to consult a suitably qualified medical professional............but first read a little, because truth be known, most of them do not know that much outside their own specialist area.