Back Pain solutions -- again !

[KILLICKB]

Has anyone been through the Davis Clinic DRS protocol? Is it hocus pocus or is it a valid alternate to surgery? I have been to the seminar (it is an expensive, non insurance covered program) and am still sceptical but my alternatives, based on other doctors I have seen, are all surgical in nature which I would rather not have even as the pain gets worse. Very little info on line other than the marketing hype.

[784caroline]

The Davis DRS protocol will cost you about $5000...insurance does not cover it. If you are considering "Decompression" therapy, I would recommend Dr Valencia who is a Neurologist--MD. It comprises a full exam, and if you are a canidate for decompression, 20 sessions. ,,with a total cost out of your pocket approx. $1000. He has ads in the Sunday Daily Sun.

I did not NOT use Davis...I chose Valencia..but before going to Valencia I tried other Chiropractic decompression sessions. My Chiro charged me an additional $20 for the decompression session (over the manilupation session) but it was NO NO comparison to what you got with Valencia. With Valencia, the session was very relaxing and professionaly done...plus appointments for the sessions are easy to make. If an issues arises during or after a session, the tech brings them to Dr Valencia and he sees you almost imediately.

You ask if "Decompression" is a valid attempt to avoid surgery. I subsequently went to Dr Spurrier (neursurgeon) for an evaluation, and he is very conservative in his approach. He definitely considers the fact if you went through decompression thearphy, and with whom. Spurrier thens offers a "drug" solution, next would be a series of epedurals, and last resort is surgery.

As in life no guarantees but they claim an 86% success rate in getting relief. As you know, you cannot speak in generalities when it comes to any medical issue, each person has a diffferent set of peculiar problems/issues to deal with. One buldging disc can be and normally is, totally different compared to someone elses buldging disc.

[Dr Winston O Boogie jr]

The Davis DRS protocol will cost you about $5000...insurance does not cover it. If you are considering "Decompression" therapy, I would recommend Dr Valencia who is a Neurologist--MD. It comprises a full exam, and if you are a canidate for decompression, 20 sessions. ,,with a total cost out of your pocket approx. $1000. He has ads in the Sunday Daily Sun.

I did not NOT use Davis...I chose Valencia..but before going to Valencia I tried other Chiropractic decompression sessions. My Chiro charged me an additional $20 for the decompression session (over the manilupation session) but it was NO NO comparison to what you got with Valencia. With Valencia, the session was very relaxing and professionaly done...plus appointments for the sessions are easy to make. If an issues arises during or after a session, the tech brings them to Dr Valencia and he sees you almost imediately.

You ask if "Decompression" is a valid attempt to avoid surgery. I subsequently went to Dr Spurrier (neursurgeon) for an evaluation, and he is very conservative in his approach. He definitely considers the fact if you went through decompression thearphy, and with whom. Spurrier thens offers a "drug" solution, next would be a series of epedurals, and last resort is surgery.

As in life no guarantees but they claim an 86% success rate in getting relief. As you know, you cannot speak in generalities when it comes to any medical issue, each person has a diffferent set of peculiar problems/issues to deal with. One buldging disc can be and normally is, totally different compared to someone elses buldging disc.

About 50% of all disc problems go away without any treatment About an additional 40% go away with some kind of non invasive treatment so the 86% success rate is perfectly believable.

I've gone through three back surgeries so I have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about.

My first surgeon was at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was very conservative and had me go through every non invasive therapy imaginable.

First was rest. I was also on muscle relaxers, anti inflammatories and pain relievers as well.

Then we tried physical therapy.

Then was traction, which sounds very much like decompression therapy. They would strap my upper body to a table from the waist up and pull my lower body down.

Finally, I was given cortico steroid injections and then a deeper cortico steroid injection. None of them worked for me so I had surgery. I was up walking the halls of the hospital within an hour of waking up but they kept me overnight in the hospital.

The problem with this kind of condition is that it's a cycle. A disc, or some other tissue pushes on a nerve and creates inflammation. The inflammation in return cause swelling which squeezes the nerve more and creates more inflammation which causes more swelling and so on and so on and so on.The reason that so many go away on their own and respond to is that the swelling, inflammation cycle is broken giving the tissue and nerve a chance to calm down.

Some times rest is enough. Other times physical therapy designed to move the tissue away from the nerve does the trick. Traction pulls everything apart in an attempt to create some space for the nerve to sit untouched. Cortico steroid injections reduce or eliminate the inflammation in the hopes that the the swelling wil recede.

One or another of these therapies will work most of the time. When they don't the surgery is the only option. Like I said, I have had surgery three times and would suggest that people not be afraid of it. Disc surgery today is far removed from the back operations of the 50s and 60s. In fact, I had my first surgery in 1990 and the second one 11 years later and there was a world of improvement.

Today, it is day surgery and done with a very, very small incision.

The second and third of my surgeries were done at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston which is considered one of the top two or three facilities in the world for orthopedics. Larry Bird has his back done there and Jack Nicklaus had his hip replaced there. They have a Spine Center which studies and treats only the back. The surgeon that I had works only on the lumbar vertebrae, so they are very specialized. He told me that recent research (in 2001) had shown that if a disc problem does not go away on it's own or with alternative treatments within three months, the odds of it responding to anything other than surgery are almost zero.

So try all of those alternative therapies that you want. ( I don't know about $5000 for traction. You can buy and inversion table for a few hundred dollars.)
But if what you have doesn't go away within three or four months, don't be afraid to have surgery.

Oh..many people ask me if surgery was so successful, why did I have to have three. My first surgery was for a herniated L-4/L-5 disc. The doctor told me that it was the worst herniation of a disc that he had seen on over 30 years of doing these surgeries. They took photos of it to show to his medical classes. It wouldn't not have gotten better with anything other than surgery. He told me that he was sorry for having put the surgery off for so long. Had he been able to tell how bad it was he would have done the surgery at once and spared me all that agony.

My second surgery was for the L-5/S-1 disc which is the one below the first one I had done. Unfortunately, when you have one done it does put stress on the other discs so sometimes they need to be done as well. This is pretty rare from what I understand, however. Another thing is that I was given a series of exercises to do following the surgery. I did them for a few months and then stopped. I was supposed to stretch before playing golf which I did for a while and then dropped the stretching routine. I was a bad boy. Had I followed the advice of my surgeon and continued with the physical therapy, I might not have needed the additional surgeries.

My third surgery was a mystery until they opened me up. What all the x-rays, MRIs, CAT scans and myleograms didn't show was that a bone spur had developed on my L-5 vertebrae. The disc was very slightly swollen and was pushing the nerve into the bone spur. My sciatic nerve was impaled on a small, pointy piece of bone. It took over six hours for one of the best surgeons in the world to get that nerve off of the bone spur without damaging the nerve. Had I let that go, the nerve might have eventually become severed. So I was really glad I had that surgery.

It's been ten years since that last surgery and although my back is loaded with arthritis, I don't have that bad pain running down my leg.
I will always have pain in my back and the rest of my body, but nothing like what I had before surgery.
I don;t want to tell anyone what to do, I just tell my story and let you decide what you need to do in your own case. I will say, that for me, back surgery was a God send.

[NotGolfer]

The Davis DRS protocol will cost you about $5000...insurance does not cover it. If you are considering "Decompression" therapy, I would recommend Dr Valencia who is a Neurologist--MD. It comprises a full exam, and if you are a canidate for decompression, 20 sessions. ,,with a total cost out of your pocket approx. $1000. He has ads in the Sunday Daily Sun.

I did not NOT use Davis...I chose Valencia..but before going to Valencia I tried other Chiropractic decompression sessions. My Chiro charged me an additional $20 for the decompression session (over the manilupation session) but it was NO NO comparison to what you got with Valencia. With Valencia, the session was very relaxing and professionaly done...plus appointments for the sessions are easy to make. If an issues arises during or after a session, the tech brings them to Dr Valencia and he sees you almost imediately.

You ask if "Decompression" is a valid attempt to avoid surgery. I subsequently went to Dr Spurrier (neursurgeon) for an evaluation, and he is very conservative in his approach. He definitely considers the fact if you went through decompression thearphy, and with whom. Spurrier thens offers a "drug" solution, next would be a series of epedurals, and last resort is surgery.

As in life no guarantees but they claim an 86% success rate in getting relief. As you know, you cannot speak in generalities when it comes to any medical issue, each person has a diffferent set of peculiar problems/issues to deal with. One buldging disc can be and normally is, totally different compared to someone elses buldging disc.

On a visit here I went to Davis as an emergency case (didn't know where and who to go to...just picked him out of the phonebook). I would say he's pretty slick and I had a "feeling" about his practice. Did he help me? Not really...as I still had the issue. A couple of years later I was at a club meeting and folks at my table were talking about back issues. Davis was mentioned by one of the individuals. She'd just been through his protocol and was angry. She said she paid, out of pocket, several thousands of dollars and she felt worse! I agree that Dr. Spurrier "might" be an option to pursue. I would say not to fool around with your back!!! I've seen him and found him to be quite professional and conservative in approach.

[Bonny]

I believe there was a thread on here about Davis. Search his name.

[Bonny]

Search Chiropractors. Lots of info on those threads.