The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : Disc replacement surgery conducted at AIMS

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 30, 2005

Kerala

Kerala - Kochi

Disc replacement surgery conducted at AIMS

Staff Reporter

For the first time in the State

KOCHI: A surgery for replacing the damaged spinal disc using SB Charite artificial lumbar disc has been carried out for the first time in the State at the Amritha Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) here.

In a statement on Wednesday, AIMS announced that its Department of Neurosurgery had recently carried out a successful surgery for artificial intervertebral disc replacement for both cervical and lumbar regions.

A team of surgeons led by Sajeesh K. Menon and Dileep Panikker operated upon Verghese, 42, who was suffering from severe low backache due to lumbar disc degeneration at two levels.

The surgeons replaced the two diseased discs with the SB Charite artificial lumbar disc, which is approved by the US FDA. Within two days, the patient was able to walk around without pain, according to AIMS.

Majority of patients with disc degeneration are conventionally treated by medication and physical therapy. However, a few of them would require surgery in spite of the appropriate conservative treatment. In the conventional surgery, the diseased disc is removed through microsurgery. The disc space is allowed to fuse spontaneously.

However, this fusion can lead to potential problems in the future like accelerated degeneration in discs at the adjacent levels. Artificial disc replacement was introduced as a solution to this problem.

The hospital claimed that this was the second instance of a two-level lumbar disc replacement being performed in the country.

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