L4-L5-S1 ADR with M6 should I go with Nick B (UK) or RL (GER)?

[helmut]

Helmut,
Thanks so much for posting. Your successful back surgery at RL in Germany is inspiring and giving lots of hope.

Thank you! I am glad it did.

It really seems that nowadays there are some great tools available to improve ones existence. More responsibility to choose those tools has shifted to the patient rather than the doctor, thats why places like this forum is a "must have" nowadays. Of course what the outcome of a surgery is in the end, nobody can predict, may be that butterfly didn't flap its wings that day in china and who knows what happened because of it ....

Helmut

[helmut]

My bigger concern is not if the device can handle what the body puts on it, but if the body can handle the device as we age without the bones falling apart around it...

I had the same questions before surgery and the answer was that from what we know today the vertebrae that has an implant attached to it actually strengthens due to bonegrowth around the implant. This is a crude summary of what I was told.
One issue is that the center of the vertebrae is rather brittle and artificial discs can get pushed into it. Supposedly in a successful operation there will eventually be bonegrowth where the disc meets the vertebrae and prevent such a thing from happening.

I also asked about the pressure between vertebrae etc. and it appears that there is quite a bit of pressure, I don't know the figures but you definitely wouldn't want your finger in between them.

Helmut

[Buckeyeback]

I actually admire your math expertise. The rest of my family are supermath people so I'm happy if I can occasionally one up them with simple logic while they're using calculus to solve a problem.

No expertise really, I just wanted to clarify the rigorous testing the M6 has been through. I didn't mean to "engineer it up" though. I'll leave that to them. LOL! I hope this disc will prove to be very successful for those who have it.