Adjacent disc herniation

dshobbies · #1 (**permalink**) 06-21-2007, 04:31 AM

Mark and all,

While reading the post on preemptive ADR on top of fusion to head off future problems, I remember reading a study that suggested ADRs also negatively affect adjacent discs over a longer period of time. With the drugs I'm taking and unable to remember where I left my feet

, I couldn't tell you when or where I read this but I believe I did briefly discuss it with Mark.

If the above is true, then putting an ADR into an overwise healthy disc would/might be fruitless. I think most of us believed that ADRs stabalized our spines, taking all excess pressure off of adjacent segments. Is this or isn't this true?

Anyone?

fuzzy · #2 (**permalink**) 06-21-2007, 05:52 AM

The one thing I don't remember ever having read after years of reading is the fact that a natural disc has some "give" and can absorb a shock coming up the spine (walking, a bump, mistepping etc) which thus would not be directly coupled to the next level. I doubt a artificial disc made out of metal could do that. Maybe that is part reason an ADR is not as good in protecting the next level as one might have thought? Has there been research into this?

Hello, I am new here.

I have DDD in the lower levels and have had pain for years (decades?) and it hurts. maybe it'll get fixed one day...

nopain · #3 (**permalink**) 07-16-2007, 10:21 PM

There has not been enough testing or monitoring to suggest that either case is true.

In theory the ADR should help to alleviate the collapse of adjacent discs. I've seen pics online of failed Bryan Discs that completely calcified.

So this is truly a "time will tell" scenario. The bigger problem is who is going to run the studies and track them over such long periods of time to get accurate data. Someone has to be the test subject.

I'm sure that 10 or 20 more years down the road we'll know for sure. But for those of us living in the here and now we have to roll the dice and take our chances.

I vote that a well designed ADR is more likely to PREVENT further disc degeneration at the adjacent levels. We do know that removing discs is not a good idea. But when it's gone it's gone. What do you do?