Minimally Invasive Oxygen-Ozone Therapy for Lumbar Disk Herniation

[John Galt]

Thanks for the well wishes Maria. I may be seeing improvement, hard to say because I usually have up and down days. Nothing miraculous for sure. In theory, healing takes a while so I still have hope but it's fading.

[Kes]

Sorry to hear you aren't feeling improvement yet, but thank you for sharing your experience with all of us. I happened to read this article recently, my take from it was that the healing phase may take several months but 75% of people experienced improvement.

Five and Ten Year Follow-up on Intradiscal Ozone Injection for Disc Herniation | International Journal of Spine Surgery

Best wishes for your improvement! Kes

[John Galt]

Thanks Kes.

Another week has passed. Had a good amount of leg pain this week but less today. Sometimes I wonder if the increase in pain is like a rebound effect to healing, if that's possible. Probably just wishful thinking. I also stretched out my hip so that may have helped to relieve some pain.
Report back in a week.
Best Wishes to all

[Maria]

To see if there's been any improvement of late. Perhaps you'll be giving a few more weeks to a few months to see if there is noticeable relief. I'm still hoping it does help even if it takes a while!

[John Galt]

Hi,
I'm not doing well at all. I'm getting worse. Leg pain has increased, which may be getting worse from doing McKenzie back extensions, don't know yet. But the ozone injection should have improved my condition by now.
Going back to Doctor on Monday.

[Maria]

Bummer. What one does not want to feel as most of us with pain issues know all too well. I hope your doctor can do something for you to ease the pain a bit. I've forgotten what McKenzie back extensions are though just the word extension bothers me .. I'll google it as it's familiar enough to me to know I've done them in the past.

I went to our little local gym a few weeks back and did some leg adductions/abductions with no weight just for range of motion. Was Ok the following day but the day after that had groin pain and lower back pain so haven't done them again. I also bought a little "thigh abductor" deal at KMart and used it sort of overhead using my hands/arms to work some upper arm musculature. What it did was make my neck and thoracic spine hurt.

So back to just walking. Seems like anything I do with my arms aggravates my neck and t-spine and anything I do with my legs aggravates my low back (other than walking which sometimes aggravates my posterior tibial tendonitis in my feet)!

Now sorry for the departure from your pain into my stuff which thankfully has been quite manageable of late as long as I'm just "growing older gracefully" (not doing anything too physical or aggravating).

Will hope to hear the doc has something up his or her sleeve to help you out on Monday.

take care John~

[John Galt]

Yes Maria it's the pain. I think that the average person would not have put up with the pain that I've endured over a 25 year period.
Right or wrong I've always refused surgery... so far.
But a life in pain is hell!

Anyway I'm less worried now. Found this study over the weekend. It had taken 7 months for the pain to go away in this case .
Case 1
A 46 year old, non-smoker, male plumber and gas fitter with body mass index (BMI) of 27.3, presented in January 2011 with discogenic type low back pain, left lower limb sciatica to the calf, lateral foot, toes and hyperalgesia to the sole of the foot, which were managed with manual therapy and oral analgesics. In June 2011 symptoms returned after he had been playing with his son and was admitted to the emergency department due to severe low back spasm. An MRI showed a large uncontained L4/5 disc herniation compressing the spinal canal and the left L5 root compatible with his symptoms (Figure 1a,b). He refused surgery and was referred for percutaneous intradiscal O2O3 treatment in June 2011 with an Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) of 24% suggesting mild to moderate disability. He had been on oral Tramadol 200mg BD and Naproxyn 500mg PRN. There was weakness to resisted left big toe dorsiflexion due to L5 nerve compression. Following written informed consent explaining the risks and outcomes, under CT guidance using a sterile technique, and local anaesthetic in a prone position, 20cc medical grade Oxygen Ozone (27µg/ml) was injected into the nucleus pulposus of the disc through a 22g spinal needle (Figure 1c,d). The needle was withdrawn out of the disc and Celestone Chronodose (5.7mg) was injected into the anterior epidural space. Two months post intradiscal O2O3, ODI was 8% (77% reduction from pretreatment) and at seven months his pain had completely resolved. He returned to normal activities with cessation of all analgesics. Mild paraesthesia of the left L5 distribution persisted with resumption of usual work and activities at this time. MRI at seven months showed dramatic resolution of disc herniation and decompression of the spinal canal (Figure 1e,f).

Case report: Intradiscal oxygen ozone therapy in uncontained lumbar disc herniation - F1000Research

Then I had my Dr appointment today. He said that's it unusual to still have pain after a month but said that he's had patients that have had pain increase before getting better.
Also said that people who do take longer to respond do better with the ozone treatment than the others. I believe that my body is reacting to the ozone, Because I've had too large of increase in pain since the ozone injection. Very doubtful that it's a coincidence.

I was prescribed PoDiaPN a few months back by my Sports Med doc. It is supposedly helpful for neuropathy. I never used it but I'll try it for the short term.
PoDiaPN™

Best Wishes