Procedure

Discectomy Procedural Walkthrough (3:12)
Part Number: 1000-000-146 Rev None

Stanley Golovac, M.D. – “A perfect candidate for a percutaneous discectomy is an individual who’s usually a weekend warrior, a person who has been pretty active on the weekends, gets typically hurt by lifting or bending or picking up something or playing with his children. In doing so the individual usually experiences back and leg pain. And that would be the ideal person to have a percutaneous discectomy done.

Well the Stryker Dekompressor offers a significant advantage. Number one, it allows an individual to have this type of procedure performed as an outpatient. So minimizing costs are tremendous from the patient’s point of view and from the insurance company’s standpoint also. It completely avoids having an open surgical scar so that means we would not be going to a true operating room setting; it’s done in a special procedures room. Usually the feedback from the Stryker Dekompressor patient is one of exhilaration. They’re happy that they’ve tried this type of procedure from an alternative form of therapy. Having something done as simple as it is, is usually completed in a 30-minute period of time. Once that goal is complete, the patient usually is able to return to their normal status of life and return to work habits usually in one to two weeks.

When we speak of risks typically we always have to introduce the three factors that can typically occur. Number one, bleeding is always a concern to the patient. So we minimize that by using the smallest needle possible to access the disc. Number two, infection is always a concern also, so we always want to try to implement antibiotic therapy before and during the procedure in order for sterility to be maintained and for an introduction of outside microbes not to be introduced into the actual procedure. And third and lastly, is the individual one who may experience a nerve injury or nerve inflammation? And so by the usage of fluoroscopy to use and access the placement of the needle into the disc, we can typically avoid any nerve injury from occurring.

It’s a device that is completely sealed and wrapped in a sterile package. It is retrieved and removed sterilely by myself or by the individual who is performing the procedure. This device is completely self-contained; it has a motor and a battery that allows revolutions of 10,000 times per minute to develop turning inside the disc. And the disc material then creeps along the shaft and collects itself in the chamber. Once that goal has achieved its maximum amount of retrieval of disc material, we then stop the procedure and send the actual specimen to the pathologist.

The post op care for the Stryker Dekompressor usually involves completion of the procedure the day that it’s scheduled to be performed. The next day that I’ll see the patient is probably within a two-week period of time to reevaluate and determine the patient’s condition. Once that is achieved, we then schedule him to begin aqua therapy, which is pretty much mandatory from my pain clinic standpoint. I would like my individual patients to get back into water, get them accommodated to bending, twisting, flexing and squatting and then progress onto land therapy. Once they have achieved and completed that goal, they’re reevaluated at a four-week period of time and then we reassess the entire patient’s complaints with any problems that may have developed.”