Rick Delamarter, MD, vice chair for spine services and co-medical director of the Spine Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, was the article’s first author. The study was designed for the FDA’s approval criteria, comparing the results of two-level disc replacement using ProDisc-L with results of fusion surgery.
Patients in both groups experienced less pain and reduced medication two years after surgery. Of the disc replacement patients, 73 percent met the study’s pain improvement criteria, compared with less than 60 percent of the fusion patients. Additionally, 19 percent of the disc replacement patients were still using narcotics two years after surgery, compared with 40 percent of the fusion group.
Disc replacement patients also had quicker operations, experienced less blood loss and had faster recoveries than fusion patients. The artificial disc’s design to maintain the natural spine movement could reduce the risk of revision surgery as well, according to the report.
Read the article on two-level artificial disc replacement.
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Amedica Patents Motion-Preserving Spine Implant
