Health

Spinal Reconstruction May End Your Back Pain

MIAMI (CBS) ― Tingling and numbness in the hands can be small symptoms of a big problem. As one South Florida woman found out, it can be a sign something is wrong with your spinal cord.

Wendy Clark started having pain in her hands and couldn't hold onto things.  At first, she thought she had carpal tunnel syndrome, but an MRI revealed she had something much worse: spinal stenosis. That means her spinal canal was narrowing and causing a compression of her nerves.

"The numbness got worse, the pain started to shoot up my arms, up into my shoulder, up into the back of my neck. It gave me dull headaches at the base of my neck," Clark says.

Clark did not want to have a spinal fusion, because it can leave some patients with less mobility, so she turned to Dr. Jeffrey Cantor at the South Florida Spine Clinic for a spinal reconstruction surgery.        

Besides reshaping the area without making the bones grow together, Dr. Cantor says the reconstructive procedure can also keep the problem from affecting other parts of the spine. "If you fuse this area, eventually the one above and below will become problematic. When we do the laminoplasty, we don't change above and below, so it doesn't cause the problem to spread."

More than a year after her surgery, Clark says her symptoms have been cured, and she is feeling better than before she started having problems. "I hope somebody out there, who's dropping everything and wondering what's going on... get an MRI. Go figure it out. It could fix your whole life," Clark says.

Clark says her recovery took about six weeks before she started physical therapy.

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Contact the South Florida Spine Clinic

More information about Spinal Stenosis

More Information about Laminaplasty/Spinal Reconstruction

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