Milan, 1 Mar. (Adnkronos Salute) — A new life, without more pain and with 15 centimeters gained in height. This is how Linda, an invented name, was reborn, a 16-year-old who underwent back surgery last November at the Rizzoli-Ior Orthopedic Institute in Bologna for a severe combined form of scoliosis and kyphosis (idiopathic kyphoscoliosis) that had caused years of pain and renunciations, and that risked ‘crushing’ her vital organs.An operation carried out by the team of Vertebral Surgery directed by Alessandro Gasbarrini, followed by a long period of rehabilitation that still continues. Today, however, the young woman «has recovered the complete functionality», explain the health workers. A happy ending that in the USA, underlines the direction of the IOR, would have cost more than a million dollars.
It took 7 hours — report from Rizzoli — to bring Linda’s back back to its natural position, «increasing the height of the girl by 15 centimeters and eliminating the causes of years of pain and progressive limitations to movement, and of increasingly high risks of impairment of vital organs». The intervention «was complex and delicate — says Gasbarrini — because the curvature came to bend the spine by 90 degrees: imagine the column that is normally straight and instead in the middle of the back deviates forming a right angle. To this was added a further deviation of the bone bent forward in the ribcage».During the operation, a thoracic vertebra was also removed, and screws and metal rods were inserted into nearby vertebrae to keep them in the correct position. The removed vertebra was replaced with a titanium vertebral prosthesis.
«The risk of paralysis was very high — highlights Gasbarrini — due to the deviation in the upper part of the column, where the marrow has little space, and the important scars also in contact with the marrow itself, left by previous operations to which the patient had been subjected before arriving at the Rizzoli. For this reason, together with that of vertebral surgeons, the work of the team of anesthesiologists, pathophysiology technicians and operating room nurses was essential: without their skills interventions like this would not be possible. And when I received the selfie of ‘before and now’ — confesses the surgeon — we shared a moment of particular intensity».
Upon arrival at the ward, after 5 days in post-surgery intensive care — continue from the IOR — Linda was able to stand up and immediately began the rehabilitation process, then continued at home.Today it is only two sessions a week, because the girl has recovered the complete functionality having the body accustomed to the new anatomy of the back, while before being operated she also struggled to wash her hair alone.
«To undergo an operation like this — specifies the general director of Rizzoli, Anselmo Campagna — in the United States of America you need over a million dollars. It may seem incredible, but we have seen the estimates made to our patients who before arriving at the Rizzoli, a public research hospital, turned to North American centers. The raison d’être of our Institute is precisely this: to guarantee to anyone who needs it the excellence of care, achieved through research and specialization, which is able to respond to situations of maximum criticality».
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