Tuesday, June 27, 2006 — For those with fused spinal discs, the surgery and recovery is unpleasant at best.  Most patients are forced to recover in a cumbersom brace or collar that allow the bones to heal together.  However, medical science has recently developed a much more desirable alternative.  Surgeons are now using metal plates to support healing bones... and the best part?  They actually dissolve so the patient need never have them removed. 

John Danielson, a neck pain patient, says, "I started getting some numbness in my left hand, my thumb mostly and less as it goes down to my little finger and that's progressively gotten worse."

Danielson's problem, a herniated neck disc, is surprisingly common.

Dr. Roger Hartl, a neurosurgeon, says, "The whole spinal cord is surrounded by spinal fluid which acts as a cushion and protects the spinal cord and that's completely gone at this level."

When conservative treatment doesn't help, the usual approach is surgery to remove the disk and any bone spurs.  Then the disk is replaced with a bone graft that fuses the vertebrae above and below together, but that takes months.

"Typically we keep these patients in the cervical collar which helps to stabilize the neck over time and acts as a brace to make sure that everything heals up and the bone fuses together," says Hartl.

Then surgeons started using metal plates that act as an internal brace so patients didn't need to wear a neck collar but that also has drawbacks.

"That can be associated with swelling.  Some patients even develop allergies to certain types of metals and they're very stiff plates that may also be associated with degeneration at other levels above."

Now doctors have developed a plate that gets absorbed after the bones have healed.  It looks like plastic, but it's actually made of a bio-absorbable sugar.  It's placed just as a metal plate would be, holding the bones together while they fuse. And then after a year or so, the plate and even the screws are absorbed by the body.

Dr. Hartl says, "The patient doesn't have to worry about living with a permanent implant in their body and it's also in terms of its biomechanical characteristics, it's closer to bone than what metal would be."

At this point, the dissolvable sugar plate is usable for most patients who need a fusion in their neck, but just at a single level, and just in the neck.