Fusion Surgeries of Lower Cervical Spine

ACDF – one of the most common cervical spine surgery. It’s done from the front, very safe surgery, minimal blood loss, patients usually can be sent the same day or the next day out of the hospital. In which we clean the disc, put a bone graft or an implant...

Clinical Case C1-C2 Instability

To start with, we’ll start with the clinical case, there’s a 78 year old male presents with bilateral hand clumsiness and balance problems. He has a history of a distant fall about four years back, which was managed conservatively and he had no fracture,...

Complications of Spine Surgery

So, spine surgery is not without complications and I think actually, it has more complications than other orthopedic surgeries. Rather, a big study from the database showed that long, degenerative deformity correction surgeries can have risk of minor and major...

Natural History of Odontoid Fracture

The natural history of these patients. So, most Odontoid fractures in elderly population can be treated conservatively, non-surgically, they are put in a C collar, they do really well. Only patients, either if there’s a young patient who has an Odontoid fracture...

Natural History of Lumbar Spine Disease

90% of these patients get better over four to six weeks. They may have recurring episodes, they may have deterioration. As I talked, patients with spondylolisthesis, instability, 33% will worsen overtime, 33 will stay stable, 33 will get better. So patients who are...

Lower Cervical Spine Diseases

So, what are the pathologies that we usually see on a cervical spine? This is a case of a congenital cervical stenosis. These patients usually are asymptomatic throughout their life, unless they have superimposed degenerative changes or superimposed injury. In case of...

Spine Surgery Set-up

So, apart from this, there are thoracic spine, rarely the patients can have a thoracic spine problems, mostly they are fractures, which are treated conservatively. Sometimes patients can have, rarely, can have thoracic myelopathy in which there is a bad disc, causing...

Recent Advances in Spine Surgery

What are recent advances into the field of spine surgery? So we have started using more of navigation now. We have these sensors, infrared sensors. We have these fiducial we put down the bone, and then our drill, the sleeves, they are all marked. So these help us in...

Presentation of Lumbar Spine Diseases

Presentation: Dermatomal Presentations. So most of the patients with spine pathologies will have some back pain, but more of radiculopathy. And radiculopathies patients who have radiculopathy do better with surgical treatment. The dermatomal level status where the...

Lumbar Spine Anatomy

Next we have the lumbar spine. The next most mobile segment of our spine. Lumbar spine has five lumbar vertebrae, and it articulates with sacrum below. So actually sacrum also comes into the same gambit. Read more about Back Pain here

Lumbar Spine Diseases

This is a degenerative spondylolisthesis. This is also a degenerative condition, essentially though it can happen in young, but it’s a desiccation, disc desiccation which causes this, leading with annular tear, posterior PLL (Posterior Longitudinal Ligament)...

Vertebroplasty and Kyphoplasty

So what are the non-fusion surgeries on lumbar spine? These are essentially done for fractures, kyphoplasty and vertebroplasty. These are patients who have what you call a compression fracture. They have no breach posteriorly, sometimes we did do them on the patients...

Who Needs Spine Surgery?

So, last slide. This is who needs spine surgery, finally. So cervical radiculopathy – not relieved for four weeks despite measures, epidural injections, medications. Lumbar radiculopathy not relieved for four to six weeks. This should be debilitating. Patients...

Non Fusion Surgeries of Lumbar Spine

So what are the non-fusion surgeries on lumbar spine? These are essentially done for fractures: kyphoplasty and vertebroplasty. These are patients who have a vertebral compression fracture. They have no breach posteriorly. Sometimes we did do them on the patients who...

Fusion Surgeries of Lumbar Spine

These are the usual fusion surgeries. There’s a whole gambit of fusion surgeries. Now, we can go from front, back, side, lateral, this, that everything, what we can find an angle, we can go do a fusion surgery. This is the most common one, TLIF. We go from the...