Back Surgery

I had a L5-S1 fusion with instrumentation. I now have numbness in my right leg and foot{I can't move the last three toes on my right foot} The pain is back in both butt cheeks,spasms are bad. I had a nerve test done last week and the neurologist said I have ridocuploy and something else,he said back surgery was a failure and said I should see a nero surgeon. What should I do?

[Abhijeet Ghosh]

Dear Friend,
Re-occurrence of pain is a bad symptom following surgery.
If the instrumentation is of titanium, i would suggest you to get a MRI done.If its not titanium, then a MD-CT scan would be fine.It will clearly show the failure/success of the surgery.
And you definitely need to see a neuro-surgeon or an orthopaedician who specializes in spine surgery.
All the best,
Regards.
Keep us posted..

[matrat]

Thank-you, I feared that this was the case.  Hoy Cooke, Jennings La.

[maggie_2]

Did you have any discectomies done prior to the fusion of you l5-s1 level?,I have had 3 surgeries and I now have that disc out again.I need to know when is a fusion deem necessary.

[Datagears]

You sound possibly like you had my issue. I had a disk that would just not heal. I had two Discectomies in 6 months and was looking at another at a year (4 weeks ago). My Dr. and another I trusted told me that two is enough, when you started looking at a third Discectomy it si time to look at a fusion. So that is what I had L5/S1 and so far I am REALLY glad I had it. I was in very bad shape before the surgery. I could barely walk, I had bad numbness in my left leg and was losing strength. This looks like it is going to help me a lot. So talk to your Dr. ask them when they want to do a forth one vs. a fusion and weight your options, because as you have read a fusion doesn't always work.

[suziqt1963]

A related discussion, continued pain Post l4/5 spinal fusion surgery was started.