Medical Breakthroughs: First successful MySpine cervical 3D printed fusion
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Back pain is one of the most common health conditions in the world.
New health data shows a quarter of all Americans experience some kind of back pain in their life. Medication, therapies and surgeries can help, but some new medical technology could be the next breakthrough treatment for back pain.
Whether it's cooking up chicken in her kitchen or digging up dirt in her front yard, nothing stops Mary Hall, except one thing.
"I could not turn my head at all, and it was excruciating pain," Hall said.
Hall needed a spinal fusion, and she became the first person in the United States to try a new targeted procedure.
"We're talking about preoperative 3d printed guides that are patient specific," Orthopedic Spine Surgeon Oliver Tannous said.
Tannous was the first in the country to perform the MySpine cervical 3d printed fusion.
"And the beauty of that is that in the operating room you have a 3D mold of the patient's spine, and you have a guide that latches onto the spine that allows you to drill the screw directories is in a very accurate manner," Tannous said.
Traditionally, surgeons would place screws and rods by what they thought was the best spot.
"You have the spinal cord on one side, you have the nerve above or below, and then you have the vertebral artery, which is the artery that feeds the brain on the other side of that screw. So that accuracy becomes really important," Tannous said.
MySpine reduces operating times by up to 50 percent, there's less blood loss, and recovery time is faster. For Hall, in less than two weeks she was back at it.
"I started doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and all of a sudden I'm doing everything, and I'm happy as I can be," Hall said.
The 3D MySpine technology has been a game changer in the spine, not just the cervical spine but in the thoracic and the lumbar spine as well.
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