Neurology

[defrance]

I had a lumbar disc replacement in 2004. I Just had an X-ray and found out it had shifted a little bit. My FP wants me to be seen by my nerosurgeon. Are we talking surgery again?

[ggreg]

CG, his family doc probably just had an X-ray machine in his office, which he sent him to a specialist for treatment, which would include, I assume, a scan.  I did not say anything about the X-ray or a scan to him, assuming the obvious that a neuro would want to do his own testing to figure out what his course of treatment might be, if anything.  But thank you for approving of my advice, GG.

[caregiver222]

Square one, is that an x-ray is insufficient for diagnosis. You require an MRI. Other that that the comments made by ggreg are most appropriate.

[ggreg]

Not necessarily.  Sometimes physical therapy can straighten this out, along with a good back brace and medications.  That is known as "moderate treatment."  If that sort of thing doesn't make the changes in your back better, THEN they will go to surgery.  It all depends on how big this shift is, what caused it, your level of pain, many things go into a doctor committing to doing spinal surgery, as it is fraught with difficulties and risks.  But I might mention that there are new disk replacements that work a lot better than the old ones, and could be if you have not tried out the new kinds, they are MUCH more flexible and so forth, that surgery could end up being really good for you.  But if nothing else on this issue, you WILL need to make a decision about strenghtening your back muscles, so that future shifts will be less likely to cause you problems.  I have terrible back trouble, it's all twisted and was fractured in an accident, and all the time my back gets out of alignment, and I honestly think if I hadn't done back exercises all these years, I would have probably wound up in a wheelchair by now.  And in addition, you MUST see the neurosurgeon, whether you wind up with surgery or not, because you do not want to put the spinal cord in any kind of danger, depending on how big this shift is.  I've lived with minor shifts for many years, but the time is coming where my neurologist is gonna have to do SOMEthing different for me.