Surgery! Today during my externship I had the chance to follow one of my patients into surgery. The surgeon was great and explained every thing that he was doing. It was an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion. Basically that means he removed the disc that is between the bones in the spine and then fused the bones together. The disc had ruptured compressing the spinal cord causing a loss of function in the arms and legs. When the disc is removed, a piece of bone from the hip is placed in the space and a plate is screwed into two remaining bones keeping the piece of hip bone in place and releasing the compression on the spinal cord. Hopefully now some function in the arms and legs will return. I liked the experience but I don't know that surgery is my area!
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