Abscess around Dyneys

[floyd]

Hi guys!

Wondering if anyone could help me. Five years ago I had a Dynesys implant L4/L5/S1, which has basically worked great (as measured by complete elimination of nerve pain).

However, a couple of years ago after a a hiking holiday with a big pack on my back, a lump appeared on my lower left side (maybe around S1 area). It didn't cause any real pain or discomfort, but never went away. My surgeon told me it was a build-up of liquid and not unrare.

Then, a couple of months ago, it shifted to right around the instrumenation area, became very red and inflamed and about a month ago spontaneously erupted, ejecting copious amounts of liquid and pus.

The wound is very slowly healing, but after more than 3 weeks, its still leaking lots of pus, especially if I put any stress on my lower back like trying to do stretching exercises.

My local doctor initially put me on a course of antibiotics, which failed to work. He also did a bacteria culture test, but its come back negative and so has taken me off the antibiotics.

Anyone had any similar experiences or any idea what is going on?? Three weeks of pus seems to be a very long time - and it seems strange there is no bacterial infection (although the doctor did say pus can sometimes be caused by inflamation).

I presume the question is whether the pus and inflamation are as a result of the instrumentation, or despite it.

This is an important distinction because if the instrumentation is the cause of the problem, I suppose it should be taken out.

However, if the instrumentation is not the actual cause, then I would prefer to keep in place.

I really hope its not a system failure because the system even now continues to work in so far as I have no nerve pain and I really don't want it removed unless absolutely necessary...

[mmglobal]

Is the hardware intact?

[floyd]

Yes, as far as I am aware....certainly x-rays show no abnormalities...

[johnb]

Your the second person I've correponded with who had an absess with dynesys hardware. There is another fellow over on spine health whose surgery is more recent. One of the reasons the FDA didn't approve the dynesys for standalone installation was because many of the test patients also had decompression surgery. So what helped, the decompression or the dynesys? No way to tell if you don't isolate the variables. I had mine removed after developing awful nerve pain with the dynesys. One neurosurgeon I talked to said the indications are not clear for the dynesys but are probably smaller than what surgeons are using them for. His opinion was the dynesys was probably useful in case of wide lami to offset potentional for instability.

Good luck.

John