Category: Surgical:

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by Dr. Shim
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Still having Pain after Spine Surgery?

Statistically,  most people do improve with spine surgery.  Unfortunately,  some people do not improve,  and a few are worsened. As a Spine Surgeon,  I know many patients want a guarantee of improvement after surgery.   The truth is, THERE CAN NEVER BE A GUARANTEE.  Surgeons can only give chances of success.  As I tell my […]

by Dr. Shim
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What is Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery?

Here in Tampa,  we are in a media war over Spine Surgery Services.  It has become a very competitive business,  with many Centers or Institutes deploying expensive marketing teams touting expertise in Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery.  It does sound great.  But what does Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery mean? About 30 years ago,  spine surgery was […]

by Dr. Shim
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Does Lumbar Spondylolisthesis and Stenosis need Fusion?

Conventional wisdom says  that patients with known spinal stenosis,  and associated spondylolisthesis should have fusion if having decompression surgery.  The often quoted 1991 paper from Herkowitz and Kurz identified a clinical advantage to perform lumbar fusion for patients undergoing laminectomy for spondylolisthesis with lumbar stenosis. Much research has been geared towards the types of fusions that would give […]

by Dr. Shim
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The Chance of Lumbar Discectomy Reoperation

In general appropriate properly selected patients do well with lumbar discectomy surgery.  By definition,  a properly selected patient is one who has a well defined disk herniation on diagnostic testing,  with corresponding physical examination findings of neurotension  (straight leg raise findings), and identified loss of sensation,  reflex changes and/or weakness that follows a specific nerve […]

by Dr. Shim
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Your Chance of having spine surgery may depend on where you live.

As a practicing Spine Surgeon for more than 20 years,  I have had the great honor of witnessing tremendous changes in my field.  During my residency training in the late 1980’s,  spine surgery was about to begin a tremendous technology change. As we are now in 2015,  Newer,  safer,  faster diagnostic testing such as MRI’s, […]

by Dr. Shim
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Hoffmann Sign and Myelopathy

As Spine Specialists,  we often rely on the so called Hoffmann Sign to identify people who have cervical myelopathy.  The video above demonstrates a positive finding.  Various studies have opined that a positive Hoffmann Sign highly correlates to the presence of cervical myelopathy. It is accepted knowledge that a positive Hoffmann response can also indicate […]

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