17 yo Ashley's Scheuermann's Kyphosis Straightened Out Today

Ashley has been suffering with back pain for several years with her progressive Scheuermann's Kyphosis, which progressed to 78 degrees recently.  It also was having a huge effect on her posture.  After being followed at Hey Clinic for a while for this deformity, she opted to get it fixed.

I saw her and her large family in preop this morning, and she was downright psyched to move forward with her surgery.  She has a very supportive extended family.

Austin, a pre-med student from NC State observed her surgery, and we had our top gun Room 12 Duke Raleigh Hospital spinal deformity on hand to help including Dr. Scouras from anesthesia, Nurse Kelly, circulator, and Motorcycle Dan as well as Brother Robert as my scrubs.  My physician assistant Leslie did an awesome job assisting as usual.

I helped position Ashley on the operating table, along with the whole team.  As shown in the picture below, I was sorry to see that her huge "hump" did not get any smaller when we positioned her prone, even under general anesthesia!  That is fairly typical with Scheuermann's kyphosis, and required doing 4 posterior osteotomies and some other tricks to help get rid of the hump.

Estimated blood loss from the surgery was 450 cc, and no blood transfusions were needed.  About 200 cc of her own blood went back to her in form of cell saver.  Evoked potential monitoring was normal, and surgery took 4.5 hours.  We got a really nice correction, getting her kyphosis down to a very normal 40 degrees, T3-L3, using new innovation for proximal fixation with sublaminar fiber-wire construct to prevent proximal junctional kyphosis (PJK).

Met with the family after surgery, and the mom and dad were both so happy after seeing her new posture on X-Ray and photographs that they both wept for joy.  My pre-med "shadow" Austin got to see the real joy of helping real families as a physician.

I went back and saw Ashley with her whole family in her large private room at Duke Raleigh Orthopaedic Floor (not ICU).  She was comfortable, smiling and very happy after seeing her new posture as well.  I think there were about 8-10 family members in her room including grandparents!

Sorry for big lag since my last blog.
I actually have 3 blog entries backed up that I've promised to get out for several different patients, but my "day job" is definitely interfering with my blogging / writing career.

Hope you are all well.

Dr. Lloyd Hey
http://www.heyclinic.com