[RedLava]

Harrison, thanks for your reply. It's nice to hear that those lumbar discs are holding up so well and yes I would expect that the cervical discs would last even longer but my situation is slightly complicated in that I'm hoping to also return to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu which I'm still currently doing and involves a lot of neck squeezing, rolling etc as well as running and weight-lifting so the lifespan of the disc is something very important to me. I'd hate to think that I'd have something in my neck I'd have to constantly worry about putting extra "mileage" on and wearing it out that much faster. AnnaPurna are you suggesting that you've heard or know of major difficulties in removing artificial discs that have worn out? The guy I talked to didn't seem to be suggesting that it would necessarily be a cake-walk, just that he was confident it could be removed should such a situation occur and that even removing it from the bone growth that locks them into place wasn't really a major problem since they often remove/shave portions of bone when doing surgeries. I got the feeling he had never actually had to do it or he would have said so, but that given the number of discs he's installed (40-50 Mobi-C's and several hundred others such as the Pro-Disc) that he wasn't all that worried about the disc wearing out either way. We were just talking worse-case scenarios.