Complications
Complications are unintended and often undesirable outcomes that can occur during medical procedures or treatments. They can range from minor issues to more serious adverse events and may arise due to various factors such as underlying health conditions, surgical errors, or reactions to medications. Understanding complications is crucial for healthcare providers to anticipate risks, mitigate potential harms, and ensure patient safety.
Subscribe to the BlogIs Hip PAO Surgery a Bad Idea?
I have my list of surgeries that when I first learned of them, my reaction was, “They did what to you!?” Hip PAO surgery has been on that list for years. Why? Its goal is to replace the need for a hip replacement, but it’s far more invasive than the surgery it seeks to prevent. Let me…read more
RIP Hip Impingement Surgery?
OK, let’s be honest here. The research base behind the world’s most common orthopedic surgical procedures is blowing up or, more accurately, falling down. It’s been an absolutely awful run for common procedures like knee debridement, meniscectomy, rotator cuff repair, and other common surgeries that make up many billions in annual healthcare spending in the U.S. Frankly,…read more Opioids No Better than Tylenol for Pain?
I’ve never been a fan of narcotic/opioid medications. Fifteen years ago, when sales reps for pharma companies descended on our office to extoll the virtues of prescribing high-dose narcotics to our pain patients, I thought these folks were crazy. Obviously, the whole thing turned into a mess of gargantuan proportions, with opioids killing many patients…read more Are All Hip Replacement Devices Associated with Pseudotumors?
A few years back, I blogged on a research study that looked at masses that were associated with metal-on-metal hip replacement surgeries called pseudotumors. However, now new research shows that these awful side effects may be more common than anyone realized and occur with other types of hip replacement devices as well. In fact, they…read more Is Nonsurgical Treatment for Rotator Cuff Tears a Long-Term Solution?
In today’s modern world, if you’re middle-aged and feel a sudden stabbing pain in your shoulder and then it continues to ache, you get an MRI. If that shoulder study shows a big enough rotator cuff tear, you’re quickly spirited off to surgery. However, what would happen if you never had the surgery? Would it…read more The Long-Term Side Effects of Spinal Fusion
On this page: The structure of the spine Fusion can cause adjacent segment disease The long-term side effects of spinal fusion The purpose of a spinal fusion is to stop movement. A one-level fusion removes the disc between two vertebrae and uses screws and other hardware to force the two vertebrae together, which then fuse…read more
This Is SO Wrong: Neck Fusion Gone Bad
I have had about enough of my spine-surgery colleagues who perform a single fusion that doesn’t work and then keep digging the proverbial hole deeper and deeper by performing more fusions. Case in point this morning is a poor middle-aged woman with her whole neck fused! Now she’s miserable and has complications related to the…read more Does Our Gut Microbiome Adapt to Food Preservatives?
All of us are paying closer attention to the food we eat, where it’s sourced, what’s in it, and how it’s made. Additives and preservatives are something we rarely think about as they seem to be invisible. There’s also incredible attention being paid to the bacteria in our gut (microbiome). However, can the additives in…read more 
