SPINAL SURGERY

darsben wrote:

Jerrybo66 wrote:
The meeting we had with the doctor at Laser Spine Institute explained that she had a bone spur on the vertebrae that was restricting the opening and was irritating the spinal column. They would cut a "window" in the vertebrae and laser the bone spur down. She would walk out of the facility the same day with not much more than a bandade on the incision. Sounded great.. Mayo Clinic says lasers can only cut soft tissue . She went to a Neurosurgeon last week, recommended by her PC doctor, who said the problem was arthritis and an operation wouldn't help. There are two totally opposite opinions from supposedly experts. How are we supposed to make a decision? How many opposite "opinions" do we need to pursue? This isn't a problem where we can just make a "poke 'n' hope selection. We are finding that it getting harder to find anyone who will recommend a doctor or dentist. I guess good ones are hard to find.. The neurosurgeon ordered another MRI so hopefully that will show more information..?????????????????

I worked in An OR for many years. Different Lasers can cut different things. We used them to cut up Bladder and Kidney stones which are by no means soft tissue (YAG laser). My wife surgery entailed removing bone spurs from her lamina and it worked just great. The newest treatment for heel bone spurs is laser ablation. Shortens recovery dramatically. So my wife's bone spurs were removed by laser.
On a more day to day example laser cutting of metals is very common so saying a laser can only cut soft tissue is in error. Lasers can cut through anything it is just a matter of the right wave length laser and enough power

Thanks for the "confusing" information. If you know through experience that a medical laser can cut bone, (I thought it should be possible) why is there negative opinions against the procedure? Why can't the "experts" agree on anything? They all have accessibility to the same equipment, is it because some don't know how to use it? It seems as if diagnoses is done by throwing a dart at a board not by reading stats, otherwise why can a person's diagnosis be so far off? I realize my whole post is questions but I don't think the answers from a "doctor" should be so vague as to be exact opposite of that of another "doctor".. Something's wrong with the industry... IMO...
Thanks for the reply. It seems we have a lot more homework to do....