Week 5

This week I was able to learn more about more patients’ pathologies and more surgeries.
There were two patients that called my attention. One of them had a fusion on her neck and back approximately two years ago. However, she was experiencing a lot of pain on her joints. Dr. Farmer said to her that probably she has arthritis. The other patient was a male who had a motor accident in 1982, from that day he experienced a lot of pain on his back. However, in 2007 he fell down and his left arm and left leg were in pain. From that day he has been using a wheel chair to move. He can walk but he loses balance very quickly. His MRI showed he had a compression on his neck. Dr. Farmer said he will operate, but does not guarantee his condition will improve due to his pathology severity.

The surgery called my attention was the posterior and anterior lumbar fusions were performed on two different patients. Each operation lasted for at least 9 hours. The first operation was performed on a 46 years old male patient. On this surgery the x-rays shows that the screw did not heal. Therefore, after the screws were placed, Dr. Farmer had to take several x-rays to determine if the old screw was removed and if the new screws were placed in the right verterbra. The second posterior and anterior fusion was performed on an 81 year old patient. On this procedure an allograph was used as well as the technology produced by Stryker ®. Dr. Farmer used Spine Navigation Software from Stryker ®, an image-based technology that utilizes scans of the patient’s anatomy and instruments that are tracked by the Navegation System’s camera. This navigation system guided Dr. Farmer to place a more precise screw placement.