Efficient Posterior Lumbar Decompression Surgery - Jens R. Chapman, M.D., Brooks Osburn, M.D. 

This is an amazing view of spine surgery! The tools used in this surgical procedure perform similarly to the diamond carving bits that fit into the Dremel tool I use for woodcarving. My goal in this post is to describe my first week post surgery and give some suggestions to the channel on future videos edited and posted in the future. I am a retired physician with multilevel degenerative changes in my lumbar spine diagnosed 4 years ago. The most problematic place was narrowing of the L3L4 space and mild spinal stenosis at that same level. After 2 rounds of epidural steroid injections, physical therapy & Pilates, I had an L3L4 minimally invasive laminotomy with intra-operative neuromonitoring done in a day surgery setting not quite a week ago. I remember the sense of wonderment realizing how the pain/paraesthesia in my right leg which was so debilitating the week before surgery was now absent! My post surgery pain fell under 2 general categories: bone pain that was a line down the center of my lower back and awful muscle spasms in my lower lateral (to the side, not midline) back on my right side. By separating the pain into these 2 categories, I would take a muscle relaxant if my pain was mostly muscle spasms and only took a half to a whole Norco 5/325 only if I felt the midline pain. Besides the medication, I would also lay on an ice pack (roughly measuring 10”x14”, or 25.4cm x 35.5cm) as well. When one pack was no longer cold or cool, I’d replace with another ice pack. All together, I had 3 packs which I rotated in & out of the freezer. I think I moved around about 30% of the time & spent the other 70% laying on my back, pillow under my knees on a firm mattress. I had a bedside stand that held my iPad overhead. This set up helped me binge watch RU-vid videos like this one! Other activities I’ve had in the last 6 days have been standing in the kitchen tabout every other day to wash dishes & prepare food, watering all of my porch and indoor houseplants, taking 3 trips to a grocery store to do walk around as well as shop for groceries and going out for out for breakfast at a nearby eatery. With watering the plants, I only carried at the most about 2 quarts of water (which weights 4 pounds; one gallon, or 4 quarts water weight 8 pounds). That meant I had to make about 5 round trips between plants & sink. And I only water indoor plants once a week, but the porch plants, I had to water almost daily. Constipation is a real thing post op so I wanted to minimize the amount of opiate (Norco in my case) I took to minimize the constipating side effects of the opiates. I also addressed the constipation problem by filling two 40 ounce Hydro flasks with water and drinking all of it over the course of the day. I had vegetable casseroles available and also made a point to eat a protein cookie by a company called Quest. Not only did one of these protein cookies have 15 grams of protein, but one cookie also has 12 grams of fiber! Compare this to one packet of instant oatmeal with only 3 grams of protein. As to this particular video, I found the interactions with the attending physician’s dry sense of humor and the resident/fellow physician’s tolerance charming. I think that next time, the blue marking pen used to mark the areas needing removal of bone should have permanent ink that doesn’t rinse off with the water used for irrigation. I wonder if future videos should be done with a combination of the cameraman (as in this video) along with views of a GoPro camera worn on the forehead close to the eyes that would capture how the resident/fellow physician view of the “operating field” appears. Editing together the views from these 2 different vantages to make a final video would be epic. Thank you for posting this video on RU-vid.

I really enjoy the surgeon's dry sense of humor and how Brooks rolls with it so well. Seems like a great surgery program.

I had a very similar surgery in 2019. It went very well was back playing golf in 3 mo.

How long does it take for the surgery

If you remove that much bone from spine , how can person survive after that?

How does the body deal with those ground up flaky bits of bone that were ground off?

Wondering how grinding away that much bone compromises back stability.

SO THESE DOCTORS ARE DRILLING YET NOT WEARING SAFETY GLASSES?? where is the SAFETY INSPECTOR shutting down the site

I'm inclined to become an Oxycotin adict and live with my pain? How the heck can you ever sit up again with half your spine gone?

OMG ,im scare.

Is this a concerning

Nice video!

OMG im scared of this and this is what they're suggesting for me....

How long is lumbar decompression surgery. Is the patient in the prone position for entire surgery? How long is the hospitalization for this surgery?

How big is the cut that is a pretty big grinder. Just asking gonna get a decompression surgery in the next few weeks.

That guy funked up that spine and lost huge chunks and jagged edges