Thanks for the responses and John, I hope that this fusion will work well till you're 100.
Hmm, my sense is that there really aren't any good methods to deal with annulus' pain e.g. IDET, nucleoplasty (is this relevant?), or any means. I hope I"m wrong. Also, I read that discs that are not positive for pain in a discogram can have painful annulus'.
I will check up on disograms that aim to alleviate pain as an indicator versus provoking pain. In the same vein, I wonder if - and this is dumb b/c a disc would have to be lifted up, if an annulus could be sprayed with lidocaine to r/o this as a pain generator.
Yap, a 2-3 level fusion's outcome from my research certainly has low success rates.
Be well folks. - ans
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