SANTA MONICA, Calif. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — If you suffer chronic back pain, you’re not alone. Thirty-one million Americans complain of the problem. It’s a leading contributor to missed work, the second most common reason people go to the doctor and costs $50 billion a year. Surgeons turned to an unlikely place for inspiration and developed a technique to get patients back on their feet faster.
Just like a mechanic jacks up a car, surgeons are jacking up backs.
“A car jack imparts lift, and what we do in this procedure is we mechanically impart lift between two vertebral segments,” Hyun Bae, M.D., orthopedic spine surgeon at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., told Ivanhoe.
Interlaminar lumbar instrumented fusion (ILIF), or “back jack,” surgery helped
Janie Lee. For 10 years she went from doctor to doctor with no diagnosis.
“I actually didn’t have a life,” Lee told Ivanhoe. “I couldn’t sit for more than five minutes. I couldn’t walk for more than five minutes. All I got was pain pills, muscle relaxers and antidepressants.”
Dr. Bae diagnosed her with stenosis, a narrowing of the spine that puts pressure on nerves. In the past, patients like Lee needed a spinal fusion.
“We put the screws in and we put the rods in,” Dr. Bae explained. “We do have to dissect quite a bit, and it tends to be a pretty big procedure.”
Instead, Dr. Bae chisels out bone to relieve pressure on the spinal cord and nerves. Then he places a “jack” to prop up the spine, stopping the bone and pain from coming back.
“That’s exactly what the car jack does: Ot tries to elevate and lift so people can work under it,” said Dr. Bae. “Well, that’s exactly what we’re doing. We elevate. We distract those two segments, and then we place a spacer in between to hold that in place so the nerves have a good working environment.”
It shortens hospital stays from three nights to one. Patients don’t have to wear a back brace, and it cuts recovery from two months to two to four weeks. A year after surgery, Lee is fulfilling a dream her pain forced her to abandon.
“I haven’t been able to read or sit still for a long time,” she said. “Now that I can, I want to finish my bachelor’s degree that I couldn’t finish before.”
A woman who’s now ready and able to reach her full potential.
“I’m a human being again.”
Previously, with spinal fusions patients were confined to back braces and couldn’t do any activity for at least two months. With ILIF surgery, patients go to physical therapy for two to four weeks with no brace and can then resume their normal activities.
