Hundreds of spine surgeries are performed at the Traumatology Hospital every year. They are usually complicated and leave wounds on the patient’s body, as surgeons need to make incisions to detect lesions in the spine.
“You can imagine it’s a cut of about 20 centimeters. A very big injury to the soft tissues, muscles that are practically detached from the spine. After such an operation, they will never be able to regain their maximum function,” says Alexei Repnikov, a spine surgeon at the Traumatology and Orthopedics Hospital.
The specific method of operation was the only solution for the motorcyclist. A total of two surgeries were needed to help the man.
“The first stage was stabilization of the pectoral vertebrae – percutaneously, which means that the screws were implanted through small turns. In the second stage, the neck was fixed through a small turn, a specially modeled small modeled screw was inserted.”
Such a minimally invasive or especially gentle method of spine surgery is still new in Latvia, and it was performed in a traumatology hospital for the first time.
“We basically do everything with X-ray control. Insert that screw… Well … You can imagine a half-square-meter area – the spinal cord on the one hand and the nerve root on the other, and you need to insert very precisely so as not to injure its nerve structures. As for the operation, there is much less trauma to the soft tissues, a significant reduction in blood loss, “says the surgeon.
However, the biggest benefit for patients is that this gentle method of surgery allows wounds to heal much faster.
If previously the patient had to spend several months in the hospital after similar spinal surgeries, he can now go home in a few weeks.
“And the patient in question was able to get up and walk without aids within a week, which is basically a very good result for such fractures.”
The man will still need rehabilitation. In the future, the Traumatology Hospital plans to use this method of spine surgery more and more often.
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