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- During my training to become an orthopedic surgeon,
spine surgery always involved complicated,
open procedures with large incisions,
prolonged hospitalizations and often numerous complications.
Well, that's not the case anymore.
Today's advancements in medicine and technology
are reducing the need for those big painful operations.
In their place, we have a more gentle, less invasive
microscopic procedure called
Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery
also known as MIS Surgery.
MIS Surgery accomplishes the exact same goals
as those traditional open procedures.
Those open procedures are done through large incisions
where as the MIS surgeon performs the same procedure
through incisions that are less than one inch.
MIS Surgery is performed with the use of the
operative microscope and through these small tubes.
It's through these small tubes
that nerves can be decompressed,
herniated discs can be removed
and patients can get significant relief
from leg and arm pain.
Today, we'll talk with Dr. Chris Wagener,
a pioneer in the field of Minimally Invasive Surgery
and the head of MIS Surgery at Coordinated Health.
He will explain what Minimally Invasive Surgery is?
What the benefits of Minimal Invasive Surgery are?
What conditions benefit from this procedure?
And which patients are candidates for this procedure?
Finally, he'll show us how MIS surgery is actually done.
- There's been a lot of recent advancements
in medicine and technology that allow us
to do Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery.
Traditional open procedures typically involve
the larger incision, lots of muscle dissection
which cause patients a lot of pain
and increase their hospitalization.
Minimally Invasive Surgery involves a smaller incision
where you have less dissection.
There's in fact, muscle dilation
and then a tube insertion
and through that tube, much like an arthroscopic surgery
or an endoscopic surgery,
the same surgical procedures are performed.
This allows the patients to have a shorter hospitalization,
less pain, less bleeding, an earlier return to function.
We can review the anatomy of the lumbar spine.
The lumbar spine consist of five lumbar vertebrae,
labeled one through five.
So this would be L3, L4 and L5.
They're separated from one another by these discs.
The discs are the spongy portions of the spine
that allow the spine to flex and extend.
In the back of the spine, there's a tube,
that tube is full of fluid and nerves
and then the nerves exit at various points in the spine.
If a disc herniates or if you have a bone spur
that can cause pressure on one of these nerves
which can cause pain, numbness, tingling
and dysfunction for the patient.
The conditions that may benefit
from Minimally Invasive Surgery include:
spinal stenosis, bulging or herniated discs,
bone spurs, sciatica, leg pain and arm pain.
Patients often ask me, "Why did this happen?"
They don't understand why they developed bone spurs
or herniated discs or spinal stenosis.
One of my mentors used to say,
"You see those wrinkles on your face,
well these are the wrinkles on your spine."
The spine takes a lot of abuse with your everyday living
and it manifests itself with bone spurs
and degenerative changes.
We've all seen older patients with their big knobby knees
or sometimes they have big bone spurs on their fingers,
well my patients develop bone spurs in their spine
and those end up causing pinching of nerves
which can cause incapacitating leg or arm pain.
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