And I could attend my important meeting 2 days after my spine surgery.
Attended Important meeting two days after surgery…
Ms Aparna (name changed) aged 45 years, is a successful IT Professional, working almost 10 hours a day. She had been suffering from back pain since 2 years. Now it had started to affect her legs, pain was radiating to both her legs associated with tingling and numbness sensation.
She had consulted many general practitioners, orthopaedic and neurosurgeons. Took conservative management in the form of rest, analgesics, neuromodulators and extensive physiotherapy .
She just didn’t want to be on the receiving end of the pain anymore, when a normal day at the office took a painful turn for the worse. “I had just completed a conference call and went to stand up, and I could not stand and was in immense, extreme pain,” she says. Aparna, who had been advised back surgery for last 1 year, was very much apprehensive like the most of us. She has undergone two selective nerve root block procedures 1 year ago.
She went home, rested, took some ibuprofen, and figured she’d be better the next day. She figured wrong. The pain was actually worse, radiating down her right leg more and causing numbness and loss of strength in that limb. Her family physician referred her straight to the emergency department at Artemis Health Institute, Gurugram.
BAD-NEWS BACK
“It was determined that I had three levels of my spine that were herniated pretty significantly,” says Aparna, who was admitted to the hospital that day and placed under the care of Spine Surgery Team headed by Dr Hitesh Garg, practicing Ortho-Spine and deformity surgeon on the hospital’s medical staff. “I know the caliber of Dr. Garg’s work. He’s not going to rush into surgery; he’s going to look at all the options” said Dr Himanshu Tyagi, Sr Consultant, Spine Surgery Team.
Dr. Hitesh wanted to first try a conservative treatment approach: steroid injection. When it failed to relieve Aparna’s pain, surgery was the best course of action.
One week after Aparna’s pain started, Dr. Hitesh Garg, along with Dr Tarun Kukreja, Associate Consultant in his team performed a minimally invasive procedure called TLIF (transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion).
During the surgical procedure, the surgeon removes the degenerated disc and inserts bone graft material to increase the vertebral height, opening the foramen so it is no longer pinching the nerve roots. He then places Pedicle screws and rods in vertebral body to hold them in place and adds more bone grafting material, which forms a bone bridge, or fusion, to connect the vertebrae.
“The bone can take time to fuse, but once it does, the pain will go away,” Dr. Tarun says. In the meantime, Aparna started experiencing relief on the same day of surgery, and she went home on the very next day.
She says: “The night of surgery, I was able to stand up at the bedside. The day one after the surgery, I was sitting up in a chair and walking in the hall. The pain improved immediately.”
IMPRESSED WITH SPINE SURGERY TEAM AT ARTEMIS HEALTH INSTITUTE, GURUGRAM
Aparna was back to work only 2 weeks after her TLIF, prouder than ever of the professionals she leads.
“It can be very anxious to have a thought of going under a surgeon’s knife, but I can truly say that from the emergency department to the procedural areas, the staff was phenomenal,” she says.
“It made me paint free and try decision of undergoing the surgery was for my own benefit and I’m very thankful to this organization with the care they provided me.”
MINIMALLY INVASIVE: IT’S HOW WE OPERATE
“When it comes to back surgery, we always strive for a minimally invasive solution for people’s pain,” says Dr Himanshu Tyagi.
Here are just a few reasons why:
The mini incision reduces the patient’s pain, blood loss, and risk for infection.
Muscle is dilated rather than cut, resulting in less pain and a faster recovery.
The surgeon can circumvent scar tissue from past surgeries (for revision surgery). “Working with healthy tissue makes the surgery safer and more reliable,” explains Dr Hitesh Garg.
