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Old 10-01-2013, 02:03 AM
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mmglobal mmglobal is offline
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Nelly, the theory behind artifical discs is 'motion preservation'. The alternative is typically fusion. When motion is removed by fusing segments together, excessive load is transmitted to the adjacent discs, causing "adjacent segment disease", breaking the discs down faster than normal.

Note that getting a fusion does not guarantee you'll get adjacent segment disease, and getting ADR does not guarantee that you won't.

Mark
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1997 MVA
2000 L4-5 Microdiscectomy/laminotomy
2001 L5-S1 Micro-d/lami
2002 L4-S1 Charite' ADR - SUCCESS!
2009 C3-C4, C5-C6-C7, T1-T2 ProDisc-C Nova
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