Surgery VS paraplegia???

Hello, and thank you in advance for your input. I've posted once before, and here are the basics:

40 yr old male, two head-on collisions (one at age 16, one at age 28) causing disability, post traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain syndrome, cervical instability, minimal brain stem dysfunction, and bilateral TMJ.  Remarkably, not in a wheelchair

Chief complaint of 12/00:
Bilateral numbness in fingers and hands.

Recent MRI 12/17/00, San Diego California

First ortho specialist, when seeing the results of last month

[CCF Neuro[P] MD, RPS]

Dear Susan:

Again, I am sorry to hear about your friend.  I am again unsure what to tell you. I really can't predict what will happen over time.  Will it get worse or stay the same?  From what I hear, it does sound progressive.  But, without serial examinations it is difficult to tell.  Whether or not surgery will halt the process depends on what the process is, and we talked about this alittle before.  What surgery can do is relieve the compression of the cord.  However, symptoms, outcome, further compression with the healing process, problems from the surgery itself, problems with the hardware, etc can be predicted very well.  The neurosurgeon is probably correct in his/her assessment, but a second opinion would not hurt.  There are plenty of good neurosurgeons around and likely some are at USC (since I graduated from UCLA I have a bias but they are excellent also).  The best case is complete recovery, the worst case is quadraplegia.  Do I think that either will happen, likely not and it will fall somewhere inbetween.  Just a suggestion, I would get an opinion from a rehab specialist as I have had good luck with their opinions.

Sincerely,

CCF Neuro MD

[Judy - Follow-up question]

Please pop on over to the Mass General boards.
"Spinal Disorders 2" forum.

People there will openly tell you who to see. They can recommend the best in your area. It sounds like you have significant issues. There are others there with very similar things.
They can also provide or direct you to lots of information.
Also, search the forum and the one that closed due to too many posts (Spinal disorders).

Here is the link:
http://neuro-mancer.mgh.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number=212&SUBMIT=Go

Best wishes.
Judy

[(Thanks Pokey and Anon)]

Sorry, I posted my (((((THANK YOU))))) in the wrong place...Thank you for the helpful site!!!!!