Nearly everyone has felt the pangs of back pain. Whether wrenching your
back by lifting a child or severely injuring yourself in an accident,
back pain can be devastating and debilitating.
Unfortunately, too often how you treat that pain varies widely depending
on which specialist you see. At Hoag, the guesswork is taken out of back
pain management with a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to individual
spinal care.
Launched earlier this year,
Hoag’s Neurosurgery Spine Program consists of a dedicated,
multidisciplinary team of spine specialists including physical therapists, pain management specialists,
neurologists, neurosurgeons and nurses, all working together to tailor
a spine health plan to an individual’s needs.
To deliver the most effective and efficient care possible, the Hoag Neurosurgery
Spine Program creates an algorithm to determine the best fit for a given
patient, be it physical therapy, pain management, surgery or a combination
of all three. Guiding each specialist’s decisions about patient
care are the program’s principles of collaboration, comprehensive
evaluation and conservative management.
“Every patient deserves an accurate diagnosis, conservative and compassionate
care and a customized treatment plan to help guide them through their
spine problem,” said
Burak Ozgur, M.D., chief of service of the Neurosurgery Spine Program at
Pickup Family Neurosciences Institute.
"Our
minimally-invasive outcomes are some of the best, not only in Orange County but also in the
country, demonstrating less than 1 percent rate of infection, complication
and readmission."
The good news for those who do require surgery is that today’s minimally
invasive surgical options allow patients to return to their normal lives
quickly – with most patients up and walking within a day.
Modeled on the multidisciplinary approach now common in cancer centers, the
Neurosurgery Spine Program will offer a team approach to evaluating patients and recommending care.
“There will be those challenging cases where we can benefit from
putting several heads together to create the best plan,” Dr. Ozgur
said. “We are all conservative,” he continued. “We all
want to treat these patients as if they were our family.”
Part of that specialized care at Hoag is a dedicated Advanced Brain and
Spine Unit with nurses and staff specially trained to care for neurosurgical
spine patients, which further allows for a full and swift recovery.
Drawing patients from Orange County, Los Angeles and nationwide, Dr. Ozgur
says most spine surgeries can be done using minimally invasive techniques
that lead to more precise surgeries, lower infection rates and less blood
loss, while avoiding unnecessary damage to surrounding muscles.