Surgery for disk herniations Disk herniations come in all sizes and shapes and they cause all sorts of symptoms. Some symptoms, such as leg pain, numbness in the legs, and muscular weakness can be improved with surgical treatment, whereas some symptoms, such as back pain, are less likely to improve. The best candidates for a …
Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion (abbreviated as ACDF) is a surgical procedure for alleviating the severe pain due to nerve root compression caused by a cervical disk herniations. ACDF surgery has been routinely performed since the 1950′s and it is a very reliable procedure. It works best in patients who have an identifiable cause of …
Spondylolisthesis is a medical term that describes an abnormal anatomic alignment between two bones in the spine. This anatomic abnormality has been around since antiquity, but it was first described in the modern medical literature by a Belgian obstetrician named Dr. Herbinaux in 1782 who noticed that the abnormal alignment of the lumbar spine and …
In this gallery of images we go through a microdiscectomy performed at our outpatient surgical center. This is a 40 year old active duty serviceman with a large herniated nucleus pulposus at the L5.S1 level on the right side. This sequence of pictures documents the steps that we follow as we move from the pre-anesthetic …
This gallery of photographs represents the step by step sequence through an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion. In this case, this is a young south pacific island male with severe central stenosis at C5/6 and C6/7 with cervical myelopathy. First the endotracheal tube is placed by the anesthesiologist, next the anterior aspect of the neck …
Minimally Invasive Direct Anterior Total Hip Arthroplasty In a recent article published in the venerable journal The Lancet, total hip arthroplasty was described as the “Operation of the Century“. This article describes how beginning in the 1960′s total hip replacement completely changed the quality of life of patients with disabling arthritis. Prior to the development …
Research performed by the National Institutes of Health has documented that in order to be proficient at a surgical procedure you need to perform a limited number of surgical procedures regularly. My surgical practice emphasizes surgery of the spine and hip and I basically perform 4 elective surgical procedures: direct anterior total hip arthroplasty, lumbar …
An operation is a series of steps, and the steps need to be followed in sequence. The same is true of pre-operative preparation before any major surgical procedure. Atul Gawande, who is a very enjoyable author, recently published a book called The CheckList Manifesto which explored the use of checklists to manage complex tasks like …
