Dr. Armen Khachatryan is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon and founder of The Disc Replacement Center in West Jordan.
He has devoted his career to spinal motion preservation technology, specifically to artificial disc replacement and patients travel from all over the U.S. and the world to receive surgical care from him.
Dr. Khachatryan joined us what the differences in disc replacement vs. fusion surgery in the neck.
He says for more than 60 years, neck problems that require surgery have been treated with fusion surgery.
He explained that with fusion the diseased disc is removed, the pressure on the nerves is relieved and then the spinal segments are locked or screwed together as part of the fusion.
With disc replacement surgery, the first two parts of surgery are very similar in terms of removing the diseased disc and relieving the pressure on the nerve, but the last part is drastically different.
Instead of locking the vertebrae together, a prosthetic or artificial disc is inserted into the disc space, and full motion of the neck is maintained.
Dr. Khachatryan says there are numerous advantages to disc replacement surgery.
With disc replacement, full motion is maintained, and there is a much lower risk of needing additional surgeries and the recovery time is about half of the fusion.
In the most common surgery, a single-level disc replacement, takes less than an hour. In many cases, patients recover after about six weeks and can even return to work in one to two weeks (unless heavy lifting is required at their job).
After a patient has healed from surgery, patients will have no restrictions after disc replacement. They can return to any activity they wish.
Dr. Khachatryan says these artificial discs have been tested to 10 million cycles in the lab, which is equivalent to approximately 40 years of life.
He says, "I believe they will last a lifetime, but we still do not have clinical proof since the earliest discs that were implanted are about 20 years out. Even these early discs do not show significant or excessive wear."
If you are interested in this technology call 801-903-5688 or visit mountain.commonspirit.org.
