Question
I am trying to decide if it is time for surgery. I have a herniated disc in my neck. At first I had severe pain in my rt shoulder, rt arm and numbness in my rt index finger. I went through 6 weeks of traction and have continued traction at home with a Saunders brand device. The pain went away in two weeks, forearm numbness and index finger numbness went away in six. Currently my rt tricep is numb and useless and my rt shoulder is partially numb. It has been 6 months since this started. I can only do one push up now compared to 100 before and working over my head is very difficult. I would prefer not to have the surgery my doctor suggest but I am afraid if I don't do something soon the nerve will be damaged permenantly. Not sure if it is relavent but I am a dialysis patient also. I appreciate your opinion.

Answer
Hi David,

Surgery is the last option since you will be permanently impaired and likely no better a year after. The reason being scar tissue proliferation and poor post-op follow up with ultrasound treatments.
It sounds like you just need to keep up with traction since it worked in the past, maybe I misunderstood your question, but it sounded like you had good success with past decompression efforts.
Please clarify if I am mistaken. I personally would augment home traction with towel traction by a skilled D.C. or Osteopath. This increases success with stubborn discs dramatically.
 Being on dialysis doesn't matter, the reason WHY you're on dialysis might. If you are diabetic, this can contribute to your overall nerve conduction velocities and effect recovery time.

Am I to understand that most of the problematic areas resolved and you have one disc left that won't budge?
I also need to know your MRI results, how many levels are herniated or bulging. Also, while in the traction device, if your numbness doesn't disappear while in it, then it probably is set up wrong or isn't pulling enough. This is true only if the disc isn't extruded or fallen into the canal, if that's the case, waiting it out is the best option since the disc will resorb with time. Surgery is rarely indicated, research suggests less than 3% of the time. Let me know if you can share additional details and I will be glad to offer additional help.


Dr. Timothy Durnin
drs.chiroweb.com