Published: July 23, 2006 11:02 pm            

Procedure aids spinal patients

Less than a month after breaking two vertebrae in a fall, 86-year-old Stella Lee of Garrett Borough was home and back to her normal routine.

“I’m getting along really well,” Lee said. “I walk to town for the mail.”

Her quick, pain-free recovery is typical for those receiving some of Memorial Medical Center’s latest procedures.

Using two needles and some space-age cement, Dr. Gary Kramer is able to fill and stabilize compression fractures in minutes.

The procedure, called vertebroplasty, is helping hundreds of osteoporosis patients across the region.

“It’s the most gratifying procedure we do,” Kramer said.

About 700,000 Americans have compression fractures of the vertebrae each year, usually associated with osteoporosis-related bone deterioration.

An interventional radiologist, Kramer describes a typical patient as an otherwise active woman in her 70s or 80s.

The painful fracture has severely limited her activity.

“The procedure takes about 45 minutes,” Kramer said. “Two hours after the procedure, they are up and can go home. Usually they are virtually pain free.”

The nonsurgical treatment is revolutionizing spinal fracture care.

“Vertebroplasty dramatically improves back pain within hours of the procedure, provides long-term pain relief and has a low complication rate as demonstrated in multiple studies,” the Society of Interventional Radiology reports.

Compression fractures of the vertebrae have been more difficult to treat than other fractures.

The risk of spinal cord damage makes surgical treatments difficult and risky.

Lengthy hospital stays, back braces and painful recovery periods were common. Surgery, when necessary, involved fusing the broken vertebrae to another, Kramer said.

With vertebroplasty, most risks and pain are eliminated.

“It really affects people’s quality of life,” Kramer said. “This is something that has really taken off.”

Kramer has been doing vertebroplasty for five years and recently added a related treatment, called kyphoplasty. The new approach uses tiny balloons inside the compression-fractured disc to restore the bone before injecting cement, Kramer said.

Memorial is poised to join clinical trials comparing the vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty, Kramer said, adding his early results show little difference between the two.

“I am finding niches where it looks like it might be a better procedure,” Kramer said.

After falling in March at her Judith Drive home in Westwood, Betty Stephey, 82, lived with the crippling pain for a week before seeing her doctor.

When magnetic resonance imaging tests showed the broken vertebrae, Stephey checked out her options. Friends who had been Kramer’s patients told her about their vertebroplasty, she said.

“They said it was instant relief,” Stephey said. “That was one of the determining factors of the decision to go ahead with it.”

Instant relief is what she got.

“I could walk out of the hospital,” Stephey said.

“There was no therapy, and no recovery time. I’m glad they have it locally.”

Lee said her vertebroplasty was a godsend after she tripped over an extension cord in her basement last month.

“I had so much pain, I couldn’t take it,” Lee recalled.

Her doctor at Meyersdale Medical Center referred her to Kramer in Johnstown. Four days after her fall, her spine was “fixed.”

“There was not much pain after the (vertebroplasty),” Lee said. “I don’t take any pain medicine.”

For a few days, she was restricted from climbing stairs or lifting more than five pounds, Lee said. A follow-up visit with her primary care doctor cleared the limitations.

“I’m coming along fine,” Lee said. “That’s a wonderful hospital in Johnstown.”

        

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