Oct 14, 2008 - 06:58:31 CDT
Anne Marie Bechler pulls out a glossy, business-card-size image of her back.It's an X-ray image of her repaired lumbosacral joint. She places a thumb over the screw on the left side of her vertebrae, explaining that it's no longer there because it caused pain. The remaining screw holds a replacement disk where hers no longer exists.
"We've been fighting this two years," Bechler said about her back pain. "I tried a chiropractor, steroid injections ... a discogram showed there is no disk."
Her spine surgery in June used a minimally invasive technique that cases less pain and blood loss than traditional spine surgery. Six weeks later, she was traveling to a family reunion in South Dakota and hiked Mount Rushmore. She also had the doctor's OK to go back to work at the salon where she is a manager.
It's hardly a miraculous cure. She's still stiff after long periods of sitting and part of her lower left leg is numb. But, the pain that once shot down her left leg is gone.
"The intent of minimally invasive spine surgery is to cause the least bit of injury to the patient," Medcenter One neurosurgeon Alan Van Norman said. He performed Bechler's surgery.
The technique is used at Medcenter One and St. Alexius Medical Center, in which a surgeon makes a small incision in the back and uses special tools to access the injured area. The alternative is a cut through the abdomen to work on the spine, then cuts in the back to insert the screws.
Minimally invasive surgery can mean less time in surgery and less blood loss. Not as much of the muscle and nerves are damaged compared to the conventional method of surgery.
"The greatest number of procedures are still done open," said St. Alexius neurosurgeon Eric Belanger.
New surgeons, however, are being trained in the minimally invasive technique, while veteran surgeons are training in the procedure.
Belanger has performed minimally invasive procedures for about a year, same as Van Norman. The work done on the spine is the same, he said, only the access to the spine changed because of specialized tools.
The procedure allows surgeons to operate on areas of the spine of some patients who would not have been candidates for surgery using the conventional method.
"I still have problems bending, like when doing shampoos and waxings," Bechler said.
But, she feels her back strength is improving. She hopes to be back to walking three to four miles a day.
(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@bismarcktribune.com.)
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