Scheuermann's Disease Support Group

Maybe someone has discussed this already, but I'd like to ask any of you who've had SK surgery if this type of procedure was used for the correction and has any first hand experience with how it worked and what their recovery was like. I recently met with my spine surgeon and he explained to me that this was the procedure he felt was the most appropriate for my surgery.

Essentially it's a lateral approach that doesn't require going at the spine from either the front or the rear. Instead, small incisions are made between the ribs on the side in order to access individual pairs of vertebrae. When the vertebrae repositioned into the correct curve, wedges are placed between them and packed with bone graft material so that the two fuse together. This procedure doesn't require the use of steel rods and screws that the traditional method employs. It does require wearing a full brace for about 3 months afterward until all the bones have healed.

If anyone has any thoughts on this procedure, I'd like to know what you think as I'm scheduled to have surgery on Monday. Thanks and merry Christmas to everyone.

I've never heard of that how does it actually straighten your spine? I've only ever heard of the rods approach and not everyone even needs a brace afterwards.

best of luck with ur surgery x

In researching this for my own understanding of what was going to happen, I found these two medical articles which describe the procedure in some detail:

http://www.spineuniverse.com/displayarticle.php/ article240.html

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/520946

Essentially, the principle is to correct the shape of the vertebrae which are wedge-shaped due to the SK, which forces the spine back into a shape that it would normally have had.

Hey Mark-

This sounds very interesting. Who is your surgeon? Let us hear from you. We will be praying for you.

Hello Jennifer,

Well it's over and I had the surgery on 12/14 (all 9 hours of it), spent the rest of the week in hospital under various forms of sedation, and finally got to go home on 12/19 after learning how to walk again using a walker and wearing a brace.

My surgeon was Dr. David Fribourge and Kaiser in Hollywood. He had to modify his plan of going totally Thorascopic while in the operating room once he realized that he couldn't get the desired angle correction using that method alone and had to switch to the more traditional lateral/posterior approach, adding steel rods and screws in order to assure permanent correction. All in all he was happy with the outcome, as he was able to correct the angle of my spine from 71 to 50. Still a little more than the normal 45, but at my age (54) and with the many years of accumulated degradation of the vertebrae, he felt that was as good as I would safely be able to get.

It's been painful, for sure, but each day it already begins to feel like it's getting easier. Nights are still the hardest, sleeping on my back and trying to keep finding positions where the pain is at a minimum over an extended period. I'm glad I finally did it and the worst is now behind me.

I'm really glad to hear that your operation went smoothly. 71 to 50 degrees is an amazing improvement! Are you able to move around pretty well? My surgery is in 2 weeks, hope all goes as well as yours has Keep us posted!

I'm glad everything went to well. 50 degrees is going to look so "normal" I had surgery and I don't think my curve is even that good. Your typing is amazing!! I was so drugged up. I hope your pain isn't that bad. It will get better I promise!! Hand in there!

Licia, 9 days after surgery I seem to be able to get around okay, as long as it's slowly. When I'm out of bed and wearing my brace, I can walk around, stand or sit pretty comfortably. Actually I find walking with my walker to be one of the most comfortable things to do because it allows me to keep readjusting my position and not spend too much time putting pressure on one particular spot. As long as I take the brace off every so often or sit in any one position too long, the brace is not that particularly uncomfortable. My brace is like a big Velcro corset that squeezes my abdomen and lower chest, so I have to eat very slowly, otherwise I feel like I'm going to explode. The brace's tightness doesn't leave much room for expansion.

That's great! I'm so happy for you. I'm ready to have mine done! I haven't been able to sleep or sit comfortably or even get up from a sitting position on my own lately because my back has been hurting so badly. I can't wait until I can get this over with!