Helping To Halt Back Pain
Calderdale News
X STOP being used by a local surgeon to relieve spinal stenosis in patients like Russell Morse
Posted on 10/01/08
X-stop procedure has become a popular procedure in the management of lumbar spinal stenosis. Below is a brief resume of my own experience in the anaesthetic management of this procedure. The patient is kept on the side which means the experienced anaesthetist can always provide extra anaesthetic agents and convert a sedative technique into a general anaesthetic one. This is one of the many safe features of this procedure. Every patient gets a good functioning intravenous cannula for drug administration, including intravenous fluid infusions and for emergency injection of rescue drugs. Each one is monitored just like any routine anaesthetic procedure.
The surgeon infiltrates the incision site with local anaesthetics and proceeds to surgical incision only when the desired anaesthetic effects are achieved. Read more...
Walk Tall
by Joanne Douglas
The Huddersfield Daily Examiner
A FORMER Royal Navy medic and rugby player says pioneering surgery has changed his life.
Russell Bates, 70, lived with debilitating back problems for five years before finally seeking treatment. And months after the pioneering surgery, his quality of life has improved and he no longer has back pain.
Mr Bates, chairman of the Alickadoos section at Huddersfield YMCA Rugby Union Club, said: "I went to see my GP because I had been suffering with lower back pain.
I'm not a great believer in going to see the doctor just for the sake of it. I put it off and put it off thinking it would get better, but it didn't."
"I went in for the operation in the morning and the next day I was back home. I was astounded."
Management Of Anaesthesia for Spinal Surgery
by Mr K. Ismail, MB ChB, MD, FRCA
Consultant in Anaesthesia & Intensive Care Medicine
The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals, Halifax Road, Dewsbury, UK
The scope of spinal surgery is considerable. Both adult and paediatric patients present for surgery, which may be elective or urgent. They mainly present with one of five pathologies: trauma, for example an unstable vertebral fracture; infection, for example vertebral abscess; malignancy (metastatic or primary disease with spinal instability, pain, and neurological compromise); congenital/idiopathic, for example scoliosis; or degenerative disease. In excess of 25,000 spinal operations were performed in the UK in 2001-2.
Surgery may be required at any site in the spine from cervical to lumbosacral. Procedures range from minimally invasive microdiscectomy, to prolonged operations involving multiple spinal levels and significant blood loss. An osteotomy is a decompressive procedure, which releases compressive forces at a localized site. Stabilization of the spine involves instrumentation above and below the unstable spinal level. Distractive forces may also be applied to the spine, for example in surgery for scoliosis, with instrumentation placed over multiple spinal levels. Insertion of such devices may be through a posterior, anterior, or a combined approach involving repositioning of the patient part way through the procedure and major blood loss. Read more...
120,000 osteoporotic vertebral fractures occur annually in the United Kingdom. A third of these patients continue to have significant pain requiring narcotic analgesics even at three months. Bed rest make the osteoporosis worse due to further bone loss in these patients. Vertebral wedge compression fractures often lead to increasing kyphosis and can have an adverse effect on respiratory function. These patients have increased risk of further fractures and have a higher mortality. Read more...
