The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Surgery to correct lumbar disc prolapse

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 15, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Surgery to correct lumbar disc prolapse

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, JULY 14. One week ago, V. Elumalai (37) was paralysed with severe pain in the lower back and left leg. Doctors called it a lumbar disc prolapse. But after a 45-minute surgery he was back on his feet.

Mr. Elumalai, a project engineer with a private construction company in Muscat, landed here on a stretcher on June 30. He was in acute pain and could not move his lower limbs. The next afternoon, doctors in Apollo Hospitals performed what they called a micro-lumbar discectomy, making a small insertion in the lumbar region and correcting a damaged disc in the lumbar vertebra.

The following morning, Mr. Elumalai began walking.

"It all happened in a jiffy. The pain began on June 7 and I was nearly paralysed for the last two days," he said. M. Madan Mohan Reddy, trauma and orthopaedics surgeon, who performed the surgery, said the condition was not very uncommon. Disc prolapse afflicted most commonly persons in the 25 - 40 year age-group, possibly due to stress and strain, long travel and bending and lifting weights.

The micro-surgery costing about Rs.40,000 resulted in less blood loss and took shorter time for recovery, Dr. Reddy said.

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