New Minimally Invasive Surgical Procedure Restores Quality of Life in Patients With Potentially Debilitating Spinal...( Early Clinical Results Unveiled at S...),Health

Early Clinical Results Unveiled at Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery

Annual Meeting

LAKE TAHOE, Calif., July 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Early clinical results from the US and Argentina reveal that a new minimally invasive procedure successfully eliminates pain and disability caused by lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS), a condition that, in severe form, can cripple sufferers. Announced today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery (SNIS) Annual Meeting in Lake Tahoe, Calif., these early results hold great promise for the nearly 1.5 million patients who are newly diagnosed each year and the neurointerventional practitioners committed to innovating new treatment options as alternatives to traditional surgery.

According to Joshua A. Hirsch, M.D., study presenter and Director of Interventional Neuroradiology/Endovascular Neurosurgery and Chief of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Minimally Invasive Lumbar Decompression (MILD(TM)) procedure offers patients that previously would have required open surgical treatment an efficacious alternative that can yield the same result with potentially fewer complications and a shorter recovery period. "The beauty of this procedure is that we have the opportunity to restore quality of life to hundreds of thousands of patients who are affected by LSS with an incision far smaller than a dime."

Lumbar stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal canal in the lower back, known as the lumbar area. This narrowing occurs when bone and/or ligament growth restricts the canal, squeezing and irritating the nerves that branch out from the spinal cord. This compression causes patients to experience low back pain, leg fatigue and pain, and, in severe cases, a significant reduced capacity for physical activity, including walking.

Designed to remove the bone and enlarged ligaments that compress the nerve roots, practitioners perform MILD(TM) using a recently-
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