Jim,
Coufal sees patients up in Anaheim every other week. The hospital he works in there is excellent. He used to have some other satellite offices you might want to look into. (Woops... I see you are in SD now!)
Regarding lumbar revisions... Dr. Coufal did a revision on a client of mine and after years in a wheelchair following multiple botched surgeries at Stenum. Immediately following the surgery, she left the wheelchair behind and has been in law school for a couple of years now.
As of a two years ago, Regan had done more than 36 explant revisions of ADR's. He likes to do a anterior and posterior procedures for ADR revision. If I were considering what you are talking about, I'd be looking for a posterior only procedure... to fuse L5-S1 with the prosthesis in place and also fuse 4-5 from the back.
If your pathology is so profound that you won't be able to avoid surgery, you might consider waiting on the SCS until you are done with surgery. You could have a positive outcome... I'd hate to confuse the situation with more hardware and more entries to the spinal canal.
Good luck.... call me some time and we'll catch up.
Mark
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