West Palm Beach Spinal Fusion Attorney

This West Palm Beach Spinal Fusion Lawyer assists people who have sustained back injuries. A spinal fusion is one type of procedure doctors use to treat people with back injuries. It can be an effective treatment, but it is also typically very difficult for the patient. If you’ve undergone a spinal fusion procedure as a result of an accident, you may be able to pursue a personal injury case.

In a spinal fusion procedure, a doctor will remove one of the “intervertebral discs” from your neck or back. Your intervertebral discs sit in between the vertebrae in your back. The vertebra are the bony structures that form your spine.

The intervertebral discs serve to cushion the vertebrae from each other. Without the intervertebral discs, the vertebrae would rub against each other and cause injury.

However, after an accident, one or more of your intervertebral discs can rupture. When this happens, fluid from inside of the intervertebral disc can lead out into the surrounding bodily tissue. Because the spinal cord and spinal nerves are near the area of the intervertebral discs, a ruptured disc can cause all sorts of symptoms in the body (including pain, tingling and numbness). This occurs when the fluid from the intervertebral disc impinges on either the spinal nerves or spinal cord (referred to as “cord compression”).

If the impingement occurs in the neck, then the patient can feel symptoms into his or her fingers, hands and arms. If the impingement occurs in the back, then the patient can experience symptoms in his or her toes, feet or legs (referred to as “sciatica”).

If the cord compression is bad enough, then you may experience paralysis. This can be in the form of paraplegia or quadriplegia.

One way to attempt to prevent these conditions is for your surgeon to perform a spinal fusion procedure. In such a procedure, the doctor will remove the injured intervertebral disc. He or she will then place bone in place of the intervertebral disc, thus “fusing” the neighboring vertebrae together. The surgeon will oftentimes place hardware in the form of plates and screws into your neck and back in an effort to hold the bone together and allow for proper fusion and healing.

If you’ve underwent a spinal fusion procedure as a result of an accident in Florida (including in Broward County, Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Miami-Dade County), contact Mr. Quackenbush at 954-448-7288. This West Palm Beach Spinal Fusion Law Firm assists people with serious back injuries. Mr. Quackenbush will be glad to discuss your case for free.

Should you sustain multiple herniated discs/disc herniations in your neck or back, your doctor may perform a multi-level fusion procedure. In this procedure, your surgeon may remove multiple intervertebral discs and may fuse multiple vertebrae together. While this type of procedure can be effective in eliminating your pain and other symptoms, it may also wind up with you experiencing a loss of range of motion. Each time an intervertebral disc is removed from a level of your neck, you lose a little range of motion at that level. When you’ve had multiple intervertebral discs removed, you lose a lot of your ability to move/flex your neck or back.

Moreover, after a spinal fusion procedure, you may be prone to develop arthritis/degenerative change at the other, adjacent levels of your spine. This is because, when an intervertebral disc is removed from one level of your spine, it puts added pressure/stress on the neighboring levels. Because you are no longer able to move/flex your spine at the level of the now-missing intervertebral disc, the neighboring/adjacent levels must pick up the slack – and this puts added stress on them, which can lead to arthritis/degenerative change. Because of this, after one spinal fusion procedure, you may be more likely to require future fusion procedures at the other levels of your spine.

In spinal fusion cases, defense attorneys will frequently argue that you would have required the spinal fusion procedure even if you hadn’t been involved in the accident. That is, frequently these attorneys will argue that you had pre-existing, “degenerative change” in your spine before the accident, and it was this condition that caused you to require the fusion procedure – rather than the accident. It will be up to Mr. Quackenbush to rebut this argument. If you had never received spinal treatment before the accident, Mr. Quackenbush will point out this fact argue that, if it was your pre-existing degenerative change that was the cause of the spinal fusion (rather than the accident), you would have most likely required some treatment before the accident.

Additionally, even if you did have neck or back issues before the accident, you are still entitled to compensation if you are in an accident which aggravates your pre-existing condition. That is, the law says that the defendant “takes his or victim as they are.” This means that the defendant is responsible for ALL injuries that he or she causes, even if these injuries are to people with pre-existing conditions. The defendant doesn’t escape responsibility simply because the people that he or she hurt already had problems/issues before the accident.

Should you undergo a spinal fusion procedure as a result of an accident that occurred in Palm Beach County (including in Belle Glade, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, Greenacres, Jupiter, Lake Worth, Lantana, North Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, Palm Springs, Riviera Beach, Royal Palm Beach and Wellington), call Mr. Quackenbush at 954-448-7288. He will talk to you about your case at no charge.