Category: Blog
Many of my patients first visit my practice with complaints of neck and arm pain, caused by a herniated disc. Although most episodes of neck pain are temporary, some patients experience chronic pain that ultimately requires surgery. Depending on the patient’s level of discomfort, there are two surgical options, cervical spinal fusion and disk replacement. When cervical spinal fusion surgery is performed, the affected bones in the neck are “fused” together using bone graft material with a plate and cage, so they can heal into one healthy bone. Bone grafts can be taken from a patient’s pelvic bone, or cadaver …
I see patients in my practice with conditions ranging from neck and lower back pain to spinal fractures. From one patient to the next, the injury is never the same. This is most certainly the case with spinal stenosis, a condition that I often see and treat. Let’s start with what spinal stenosis is. It is a narrowing of the spinal canal that can occur anywhere along the length of the spine. The symptoms depend on what part of the spinal cord or nerve roots that are affected. Although spinal stenosis is more common in older patients due to the …
Emergency room visits, specifically spinal cord injuries, are becoming increasingly prevalent amongst children and adolescents. Unfortunately, this increase is occurring from those who use all-terrain vehicles, otherwise known as ATVs. For those of you who are unfamiliar, ATVs are 3 or 4-wheeled motorized vehicles that weigh up to 800 pounds and are popularly used for recreation. Although ATVs are not common on the streets of Manhattan, I am very familiar with the damage they create. There are thousands of ATV-related injuries amongst children and adolescents each year and reports of children as young as eight being treated for an ATV-related …
Patients frequently come into my practice with the notion that surgery is the best cure to their scoliosis pain. How do you know that’s the best course of action? Well, that’s my job. Surgical decision making for scoliosis is multi-factorial, and we assess many different parameters in coming to the right decision for each patient. The Scoliosis Research Society estimates that approximately 1 in 40, or 7 million people are affected by scoliosis in the United States alone, making it an extremely prevalent condition. Unfortunately it most often develops in children, particularly female adolescents between the ages of 10 and …
