[lit-ideas] Re: Kyphoplasty?
- From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2005 19:46:03 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Friday, February 11, 2005, 6:43:50 PM, JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx wrote:
Jac> I know there are a number of various types of medical Doctors or people
with
Jac> relatives who are MD's on this list. I have a question for any of you
that
Jac> might be able to steer me in the right direction. In addition to having
Jac> recurrent colon cancer and all the attendant joys of chemo-therapy, my
Mother,
Jac> who is 63, had had excruciating back pain for months. First they were
Jac> concerned that it was cancer moving into her bones. CT scans cleared
that one up.
Jac> Then they told her she had severe osteo-arthritis. Another physician
nixed
Jac> that diagnosis. The most recent diagnosis (how is it possible for
something in
Jac> this day and age of medicine to be so undiagnosable??) is herniated discs.
Jac> Of course, they want to do surgery. She's absolutely terrified of and
Jac> opposed to surgery, but is desperate. A friend who works in a medical
records
Jac> dept. at a local hospital told me about a fairly recent procedure, called
Jac> "kyphoplasty" in which a glue-like cement-like substance is injected into
the places
Jac> beteen the discs. A search on Google for "kyphoplasty herniated discs"
Jac> turned up nothing helpful.
A.A. If the diagnosis is so uncertain, why is kyphoplasty the answer? My
understanding of kyphoplasty is that it is for the osteoporotic fractures that
create the kyphosis, or hunch back, of osteoporosis. It's still, I believe,
relatively experimental. Back pain is the #1 problem in the U.S. It costs
billions in medical care, much of it unsuccessful, as well as lost
productivity. Much back pain is, I hate to say it, psychosomatic in origin.
Not all of it, of course, but a huge amount of it. Psychosomatic pain is real
pain. It just has no physical cause.
Andy Amago
Jac> Julie Krueger
Jac> Trammadol isn't touching her pain .... something's gotta be done!
Jac> ------------------------------------------------------------------
Jac> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
Jac> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
--
mailto:judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
