As promossed, I'm posting today after just leaving my first meeting with my "new" surgeon. After being dropped from my prior Dr's care due to two cancled ADR surgerys on their part, I met with the Surgeon that they refered me to today. he is the only other Dr in the area that does this proceedure. I had previously been going to a surgeon that performs several ADR's per week & did them during vthe study as well. He seemed perfectly fine with reccomending me for Charite disc replacment after my disc-o-gram last July. I battlet my Ins Co for 8 Months before gaining 100% approval for the ADR. Now today I meet with this new surgeon at the Medical University of South Carolina. They are well known for thier cutting edge, state of the art techknowledgy. This new surgeon review all of my film & paitent history from my previous Dr at Southeastern Spine Institute, his name is DR Glaser. He too is well respected in his field & has an outstanding reputation. However his first comment to me was "why do you want to have an artificial disc replacment instead of fussion?" He was leaning towards fussion which I could have had over a year ago. I've waited all this time just so I could get the ADR & not a fussion. He said that the Charite disc is very new techknowledgy & not yet proven over a long period as is the fussion. I told him why I didn't want fussion as it usually only leads to further fussions in the future. My previous Dr had scheduled me for ADR surgery two times & both wers cancled by the Clinic. Now after meeting with Dr Glaser at MUSC today he has me worried about having ADR. He said it can lead to many complications , Death, Blood clots in the legs, lack of acceptable recovery, & somekind of ejaculation problem ( I forget what he called it ) that I've never heard of. he said he has performed 6 proceedures with four positive results & two with complications. I told him that my mind was made up to go with the ADR & he said he would have his staff get the ball rolling & that they will be in touch with a date. I now feel very nervous about my decession. I told him about all of the positive results I read about in this forum & he said that usually the only people that participate in these forums are either those who know nothing & trying to get some kind of info, those who had a sucessfull surgery & wanted to share it & a few that had a bad experience & wanted to share it.
Is there anyone that has gone through anything similar to this where you get one surgeon that says certainly that ADR is the way to go & then another who is more inclined to do a fussion? I still want the Charite disc but must admit, this guy has me somewhat nervous now. I've had seven prolo injections in the same area about two years ago from a Dr that was certain that that would cure me. My new Dr says that the Prolo injections make the surrounding tissue very tough & less likely to benifit from ADR????