Video · Patient story
Published on YouTube Length 1:42
A 56-year-old patient says years of back pain and sciatica sent pain down his right leg after as little as 20 minutes in a vehicle. Physical therapy and chiropractic care didn't help, and he was wary of surgery until he saw the damage on his MRI. He says he walked out in less than 24 hours after a four-hour outpatient surgery, the sciatica pain was gone right away, and he went back to work part-time after three weeks.
Patient experiences are individual. Individual results vary.
Medically reviewed byDr. Hooman Melamed, MD, FAAOS
From the video's automatic YouTube captions, edited for punctuation, capitalization and paragraph breaks. Filler sounds such as "um" are left out, and clearly misheard names and medical terms are corrected. Words that could not be made out are marked [inaudible].
You know, the surgery has been a huge success, slowly getting back to my life I had 10 years ago.
I’m 56 years old. I’ve been suffering from back pain for many years. I was having real bad sciatica pain, where even 20 minutes in a vehicle, I would start to have immense pain running down my right leg. Try physical therapy for years, and to a chiropractor many times, and I was very leery of having surgery, just because of all the, you know, surgeries I heard that didn’t go well.
I think the thing that was most revealing to me was when we went over the results of the MRI, and I could see the physical damage in my lower back that, you know, physical therapy or chiropractic care was not going to fix. And surgery on July 21st, you know, as an outpatient. In fact, most people are surprised by, I got up and walked out of here in less than 24 hours after four hour surgery. The sciatica pain was gone immediately.
I, you know, I had, I recovered for three weeks and went back to work part-time. You know, the surgery has been a huge success, slowly getting back to my life I had 10 years ago. I have two kids that are teenagers that are active in soccer and sports, and, you know, getting back to the life that I want.
Second opinions welcome
Send your imaging for a personal review with Dr. Melamed. Many patients learn a smaller, muscle-sparing option is on the table.