First Day

Today I shadowed a neurosurgeon and experienced the true meaning of long hours.  I got up this morning at around five o'clock AM and got back to my house around eight PM.  During this 15 hours I observed two surgeries.  The first was a Posterior Spinal Fusion where the surgeon went in through the back, exposed the spine, and removed the spinous processes the lamina and the facets to decompress the nerves.  This was to relieve severe back and leg pain as well as to stop the small amount of paralysis that she was experiencing in her legs.  To do this the doctor had to remove bone around the nerve and the fuse the transverse processes together by using the bone graph collected from the bone removed.  Of course the bone does not grow instantly, so to stabilize the spine the doctor places screws and rods as scene in the picture below.


The patient I saw today had the vertebrae from L2 (lumbar 2) to S1 (sacrum 1) stabilized.  There are seven cervical vertebrae, twelve thoracic, five lumbar vertebrae, and five fused sacrum bertebrae.

   

The second surgery was an Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion which came from the front of the body.  A general surgeon had to come and navigate the through the patients organs to expose the spine for the neurosurgeon.  In this surgery the disc between L5 and S1 was removed because it was causing the patient pain and then it was replaced with at surgical implant filled with cadaver bone and BMP(Bone Morphogenetic Protein). The implant was then secured with crews effectively stabilizing that portion of the spine and hopefully relieving the pain.
Watch this video to see a demo of the procedure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waal6ysBxco