ALPA Approach or XLIF?

[B13s]

Originally Posted by mmglobal

B13, that number might be interesting, but it would not be meaningful. These forums, like my client base have artificially inflated numbers of failures. A highly successful patient does not seek me out to tell me that they are doing wonderfully. The successful patients are not spending their days on the internet posting their woes.

I'm reviving the paremeterized surgical outcomes thread that I started 5 years ago and that will produce some interesting data. Even with that, the data should not be used for decision making process unless there is a way to 'grade' the patients. If a surgeon is unwilling to take a difficult patient and only 'cherry picks' his results will appear better. The surgeon who is willing to take the 'basket cases' may have results that don't look as good, but are actually far better in many ways.

Mark

What I mean how many of out your clients that had ADR's with you need revision, not counting the ones that contacted you just because of the revision having their ADR's implanted before.

[mmglobal]

That is a great question and will require some research. Off the top of my head, Off the opt of my head, I know 2 people who were my clients before their ADR surgery who had revisions. There may be more, but I'll have to look. My guess is that I know approximately 20 revision patients. Most would not have required revision had they done something different (gone to more careful/experienced surgeon.)

Give me some time to do research... if I haven't updated this in a couple of weeks... hunt me down.

[mmglobal]

I had breakfast yesterday with an XLIF surgeon from Los Angeles; Larry Khoo, co-director of spine at UCLA. One of the things we discussed was XLIF. Very interesting contrasts... he describes XLIF as "mini-ALPA" The instrumentation that Nuvasive has developed allow even smaller access.

I like Dr. Khoo. He got on my radar at SAS with excellent presentations about several minimally invasive procedures that have nothing to do with ADR. Also, I was researching a very complex FBSS case that includes AXIALIF and he came highly recommended. He's pretty amazing. I'm looking forward to spending more time with him.

All the best,

Mark

Mark