Listen to Dr. Darrow explain
This is an audio clip from Dr. Darrow’s radio show Living Pain Free. In this clip – a transcript of the clip is below – Dr. Darrow answers an email from a woman whose husband has had a cervical spine discectomy that has left him in more pain. She is trying to find him help. Dr. Darrow reads her email and discusses the problem of the failed neck surgery.
Dr. Darrow: This woman writes about her husband: “He is now in so much pain. The the worst is waking up. The pain is horrible but he gets up and goes to work. He gets no help with his pain. Please is there anything that can be done to assist him, he has been living with this for years and is getting worse since the surgery. Can you please help?
So this is a cry for help because of a failed surgery.”
I think the key points here are that number one:
- This gentleman had cervical degenerative disc disease and this poor guy had a neck surgery for it and had a disc removed from his neck. I’m not sure what good that did because he’s in worse pain now. I see this all the time where people come in and have discectomy is and they’re worse. Sometimes the surgeon will put in what’s called a spacer or some type of plastic or metal device between the vertebrae to take the place of the disc they removed. Now some of these surgeries must work very well or they couldn’t keep doing them but I get cases where the surgery didn’t work. Should there ever be a surgery done for degenerative disc disease. In my position, here in the patients I see and the work that I do of regenerating the body, regrowing tissue by doing injections of platelets or stem cells or mixed together that we seem to get people better who have degenerative disc disease.
Not relying on MRI
- I see many people with degenerative disc disease that don’t have any pain. So I’m not going to trust an x-ray or MRI to decide for me if the person has pain. I know this is a mind-bender for a lot of people because we grew up thinking that if we see something on an MRI or an x-ray that must be the truth of who we are and it just is not the case. It is difficult sometimes to explain to new patients who come in that what they see on MRI and what they really have can be two different things. Studies show that people that have no pain at all can have terrible things in their MRIs and X-rays and vice versa, they can have terrible pain and their MRI or x-ray shows nothing. We have to be very careful, as doctors to remember to use our hands so as doctors we need to touch the area, move the person around, find out where the pain is being generated from.
The failed surgery
- It is possible in this case that we discectomy in this man’s neck which was a surgery that in my book should never have been done.
- Discectomy is a drastic surgery. It removes a disc to get rid of neck pain or back pain and in this case it didn’t work. I get patients like this all the time. They come in after these failed surgeries, failed meaning surgery was done and it didn’t work, now with a diagnosis of failed shoulder surgery, failed hip surgery, failed neck or back surgery. What do these recognized diagnosis tags tell you? That way too many of these surgeries are being done and they are failing people. These failed surgeries should have never been done in the first place.
How can this person be helped?
- Regenerative medicine using platelets and stem cells are typically the answer for how to heal these areas. These treatments do not work all the time, but I am saying is that the landscape of medicine in musculoskeletal and orthopedics is totally changing from doing surgery to regenerating the body. The easy part about doing regenerative medicine is it’s a very simple injection process we don’t have to open up the body with a scalpel of the side effects are very minimal if any very rare to have side effects if possible that’s very rare wear a surgery there are many side effects.
In a person with failed neck surgery, we would have to examine the neck and as mentioned above, physically find the spots in the neck that is causing this person’s pain. Then we could develop a program to help alleviate the pain and restore function.
Our treatments to restore cervical neck stability by repairing and regenerating the neck ligaments
Many patients with these problems will talk about dizziness or even Bell’s Palsy. They also talk about 2 – 3 times a week chiropractic adjustments. When the patient says they are having success at the chiropractor with their cervical lordosis and their symptoms of dizziness, we know that we can have a realistic expectation that we can help. The chiropractic is helping because the vertebrae are pushed back towards a natural alignment. The reasons that the patient needs to see the chiropractor 2 – 3 times a week is because the the adjustments are not holding. We do get many referrals from chiropractors to help their patients by strengthening the cervical ligaments with our injection treatments.
Platelet Rich Plasma injections
PRP treatments involve collecting a small amount of your blood and spinning it in a centrifuge to separate the platelets from the red cells. The collected platelets are then injected back into the injured area to stimulate healing and regeneration. Research has shown PRP to be effective in treating degenerative disc disease by addressing the problems of cervical spine ligament instability.
Stem cell injections
Stem cell injections involve the use of Bone Marrow derived stem cells. The stem cell treatments help restore ligaments strength by causing the regeneration of ligament, tendon, cartilage and bone regeneration.
In our articles we discuss these treatment options
Do you have questions? Ask Dr. Darrow
3 Svensson J, Peolsson A, Hermansen A, Cross JJ, Abbott A, Cleland JA, Kierkegaard M, Halvorsen M, Dedering Å. The effect of neck-specific exercise and prescribed physical activity on headache and dizziness in individuals with cervical radiculopathy: Further analyses of a randomized study with a 1-year follow-up.
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