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Modern Spinal Surgery
As with all types of medicine, spinal surgery has evolved but slowly. Still today, we utilize fusions as the main course of treatment, the same as we did 50 years ago. Some new techniques such as minimally invasive spine surgery and artificial disc replacement have recently been made available but still fusion surgery is the mainstay of care. The reasons for this are multiple. Most spinal surgeons were taught fusion type surgeries and thus they may find it difficult to deviate from that technique. Also, artificial disc surgery requires a general surgeon since it is an abdominal surgery and therefore the orthopedic or neurosurgeon cannot perform these types of surgeries alone, thus making them more time consuming and difficult. Minimally invasive spine surgery or microspine surgery is being utilized more and more but due to its complexities few actually perform the more complex procedures. Another reason fusion surgery is so popular is money driven issues. Fusion surgery pays more than microspine surgery and pays similar to the more complex artificial disc surgery. Finally, fusion hardware manufactures make billions of dollars selling there fusion systems to surgeons and they "push" these items on doctors by offering gifts, vacations, seminars, etc. for utilizing their equipment. These "gifts" are made not to look like kickbacks but that is basically what they are. Nonetheless, it is like the old saying, "give a carpenter a nail and they will hit it with a hammer" and thus a surgeon who is given a back pain patient will want to operate on that patient because that is what they do to make a living. At least now there are several options for the treatment of spinal patients. Part of the reasons fusions are still so popular is because no matter what type of spinal surgery one has, the success rates are similar. The main differences between the procedures is that complication rates and recovery times are lower for minimally invasive surgeries.
Links:
www.spinenebula.com and www.spinenebula.net
www.spine-online.net and www.spineteam.net
www.microspine.biz www.microspine.info www.microspine.us www.microspineinc.com www.microspineinc.co.uk
www.microspineinc.us www.microspineinc.org www.microspineinc.info www.microspineinc.net www.microspinology.org www.microspinology.com www.microspinoscopy.com www.microspinoscopy.org www.neuroscopy.com www.e-spine.net www.laserspine.net www.namda.org www.mritoday.net