Elizabeth, how are you? Nice meeting you. Scoliosis, yeah. I’m sure you guys were diagnosed it when she was a teenager or adolescence?
When I was almost 18.
Really? You didn’t notice it at all beforehand?
No.
Let’s check things out [inaudible] so step down, [inaudible] examine you. Let’s get some real, what I call scoliosis x-rays, and I’ll see you after that.
All right, Liz, we’re gonna check everything out, all the imaging, comprehensively, and then, you know, we’ll discuss the later once it had a chance.
Okay.
Okay, great. Very nice to meet you.
Joining us now is Dr. Hooman Melamed. And what did you find with her scoliosis?
The only way to fix it is really a surgery. You have to do surgery to fix it. Scoliosis is the abnormal curvature of the spine. A lot of people have 20, 30 degree range, not a problem. They go to the entire life, no problem. And you could see, actually, that’s a 71 degree curve and that’s a 54 degree curve on the bottom. And you can see the bottom curve has actually shifted, you know, the bottom part of the body to the left side. You can see, I mean, the head is not exactly 100% lining up with the middle of the pelvis.
What options are there for her?
In her case, the question comes in two. Would you treat both curves? There’re pros and cons of treating both curves. Or you do the upper curve, the 71 degree curve. If you do the upper curve, the 70 degree curve, you leave the bottom curve alone, which means she has all these normal discs, which are important to be functional and do everything you want to do without any restrictions. But she may have the bottom, because she’s already complaining of pain into her hips. It’s a trade-off, and the bottom curve may progress in the next couple years and you have to go back in and do surgery to straighten it out. Whereas if you do both curves, obviously longer surgery, so risk, risking a little bit more, but you get a nice balanced spine. But you only have two discs in the bottom, which they tend to wear out in the next 20, 25 years, rather than in us sitting here, it would wear out for us in the next 50 years.
And the nice thing about it, on the x-ray we saw the custom rod. There’s a new, pretty cool technology. Whichever option you take, if you take only one curve, but especially the both curves, instead of having to measure the rod during the surgery, cut the rod and do all this manual labor to get the rod, basically it cost custom for her body. You measure the rod before surgery, and right when you’re ready, I asked for the rod, it comes in and ready to go, and it exactly fits her body.
Elizabeth was very, is very excited about her wedding, and she was also worried that she wouldn’t be able to have children. But the nice thing about these procedures will be that even if she has some type of procedure, she can still carry a pregnancy, right?
Absolutely. What are you doing, both curves or one curve, pregnancy is never a problem in scoliosis. Most importantly, I say when you do the pregnancy, try to do a vaginal delivery, because instead of a c-section, because they cut the important muscles that are an important part of the core and trunk stability. So you want to preserve all that, so you can have a, maintain your core for the rest of your life.
I want to emphasize this for people watching at home. I don’t know if you notice this, but why, why, while Dr. Melamed was talking, you know, that’s a surgeon who does a lot of cases like this. He’s very confident, he knows what needs to be done. What would it mean to you to be able to stand up tall on your wedding day and look at your future spouse in the eye?
I didn’t even tell him about it until year and a half into our relationship, because it’s just something, it really [inaudible] like I just feel ugly all the time, and like it just is humiliating. And like, I hate how I look at my wedding dress because I hate the [inaudible]. And I would hate to get to my wedding day and not be able to walk down to him, or have to have somebody help me stand there. I’d like to be able to stand there. I mean, that would be such a blessing from God. Yes, right now in my life I don’t see that happening.
If you, you know, get it correct there, first of all, you probably grow at least two inches. And if you, I mean, if you, you guys should get other opinions, no problem. But if you guys choose to go with me, I’m happy to do the surgery free of charge to you guys.
