NEW HOPE FOR THOSE SUFFERING WITH EXCRUCIATING PAIN FROM HERNIATED DISCS
Anesthesia Pain Care Consultants – Oxygen-Ozone Treatment
There is good news for South Floridians suffering from chronic pain associated with degenerative disc disease. Anesthesia Pain Care Consultants (APCC) is now offering oxygen-ozone treatments, which have been shown to be effective at decreasing disc volume and pressure on the nerves, reducing or eliminating pain while improving function.
At APCC, the oxygen-ozone procedure is performed by Javier Vilasuso, MD, who has administered hundreds of these treatments with great results. It is done on an outpatient basis at The Surgery Center of Fort Lauderdale.
Oxygen-ozone gas is delivered via injection by an interventional pain management physician directly into the herniated disc. Once injected into the affected disc, the ozone gas reactive process works over two to three months (mechanically), significantly reducing the size of the disc. This offers a long-term, non-surgical approach to reducing pain caused by herniated/bulging discs.
These positive results can be attributed to a chemical reaction with the oxygen-ozone gas that causes the oxidation of proteoglycans, proteins found within the gel-like center of the disc (also known as the nucleus pulposus).
The oxygen-ozone treatments performed at APCC are not covered by insurance and cost approximately $3,000, including the outpatient surgical center expenses.
Used throughout Europe and Asia for more than three decades, this treatment is now becoming more available in the United States. In 2009, Dr. Kieran Murphy, a researcher at the University of Toronto, presented findings from a combination of several studies on oxygen-ozone treatments that showed patient outcomes were similar in terms of pain reduction and patient function for those who had a discectomy. Researchers also reported that the complication rate and recovery time were lower with oxygen-ozone injections compared to other surgical techniques commonly used to treat disc disease.
