Kyphoplasty surgery

Okay, so I just want to talk to you a little bit about kyphoplasty which you're going to be having today. What it is, it's a way to ensure that the fracture in your back in the vertebra is fixed in a nice rigid position so it hopefully doesn't cause you any more pain. As you know, what you have is something called a vertebral compression fracture. So imagine one of the bones in your spine, in your back, instead of being a nice box shape, has now been squashed at the front into a wedge, into a triangle. That change in position and the micro-movement at that level is what's causing the pain in your back. What we do in the kyphoplasty procedure is it's all very small cuts in the back, nothing big, very small one and a half centimetre cuts. We go down to where the fracture is from the back and put a balloon inside and we jack out that wedge so it's back into a box shape as much as we can and where that cavity is we then fill with a few mils of bone cement and that then hopefully sets the bone into that nice box rigid formation so it doesn't collapse anymore and doesn't do any more the microbe movement. It's all done under x-ray guidance so we know exactly which level we're going to it's not by guesswork and procedure only takes about 20 minutes to do per level so if you're having maybe two or three at a time that That is an hour. If you're just having one level, you should be done in about 20 minutes. Like I said, it's a very small cut in your back. We don't even put stitches in. It's all just those little paper stitches that you might have seen in casualty and a small elastoplast dressing over the top. We definitely are going home the same day. Recovery is 24 hours, so if you're still at work, you should be able to go back to work tomorrow. For the first two weeks after the procedure, we'd ask you not to get the wound wet. By that I mean don't get into a pool or a bath but a quick shower and if you pat the wean dry on the back that should be absolutely fine. We will be giving you a telephone conversation in about six weeks time just to check how you're getting on with the procedure. Most people have absolutely no problems and the pain completely goes away. Very rarely the pain doesn't completely go and you may end up with back pain in that area and for the rest of your life. We hope it doesn't happen but it is known to. Very occasionally when we're putting the cement in your back, some of the cement can escape from inside the bone and start irritating some of the nerves. Because we're doing it with x-ray, we can see it happening and if it starts happening we will then stop, but very occasionally if it's a very small amount and it cannot be seen on the x-ray, I'm afraid there's not much that we can do about it and we hope that doesn't happen. And again, something that's very rare, but you do need to know about, is something called Cauda Requina Syndrome. By that, I mean some of the nerves that are coming out at that particular level of the bone get irritated during or after the procedure, and they forget to work, and that can leave you with an inability to pass urine, or pass motion, or the opposite, which is inability to control them. If that happens, especially in the first couple of days, please come back to the hospital, whether it's day or night, it's casualty. But like I said, I don't want to worry you, it is a very, very rare complication.