Learn About XLIF Surgery

[Music Playing] Dr. Travis Stork: Whether it's lugging your little ones around, bending your back the wrong way or devastating accident back pain affects 80% of Americans at some time in their lives. Mark's case is extremely severe but a new procedure promises to give him his life back. Mark: I used to be a machinist, firefighter, I was very energetic. I faced back on, and it just put away with the back injury, I fell in piping, and it was about 12 feet. Female Speaker: Since Mark's injury our life has come to a screeching halt. Mark: I went off-work, I couldn't pay the bills. Female Speaker: The last three years, it's just really gotten so severe that he is just either in bed or on a couch. Mark: I am missing everything. I am missing the world. I missed a lot. I want to die. Excuse me. Dr. Ian Armstrong: Mark had had back problems for a number of years and has been incapacitated by these back problems. Mark: I'll be okay. I'll be okay. Dr. Ian Armstrong: So a surgery today is called the extreme lateral approach to the spine or XLIF. This technique is revolutionary for a number of reasons. One, it's minimally invasive. Importantly, we leave those strong lumbar muscles intact. We are able to go through and get down to the disc from this lateral approach. Take out the disc in its entirety and then replace it. We are looking for where we are going to make our entrance; we need to make it straight above the L45 space. So our initial incision will be the safety incision. Our next step, we'll be using a probe which is, it'll be seen by x-ray. This allow us to go through that muscle without damaging any of the nerves. So this next device is really what has allowed us, this new and revolutionary surgical approach. It is a retractor system. We can expand this to give us a working port. We are looking directly at the lateral disc. Now we are going to enter the disc base with the disc knife. It's a retractable knife. So we're actually in the disc base now. Scrapping out what I'd call Bad Disc. We're ready. So here is that implant. In the middle of it, we have a product that is an Adult Stem Cell Product. These adult stem cells would be put in the implant. They'll then over the next three to six months going to bone. I think we are able to accomplish all we wanted to accomplish essentially reconstructed this segment of spine to an incision about this big. Dr. Travis Stork: Mark is here now with Neurosurgical Spine Specialist Dr. Ian Armstrong and we were just talking three days. Mark: Three days. Three days, I feel like a million bucks. Dr. Travis Stork: You are walking around. Mark: Yeah.