Bill Walton, Basketball Hall-of-Famer and The Better Way Back® spokesman, was recently featured on the news site RealAspen. The article describes Bill’s struggle with chronic back pain and his experience with the minimally disruptive eXtreme Lateral Interbody Fusion (XLIF) procedure.
Dr. Greg Poulter, a spine surgeon at Vail-Summit Orthopaedics who performs the XLIF procedure but did not operate on Bill, is also quoted in the piece:
“I’m not necessarily trying to sign people up but just let them know that if they get to a point where maybe others have told them they can’t be helped, there’s a chance they could be helped, and if you can take someone who was in Bill Walton’s situation and turn it around for them where they can be active again, that’s a big reason why we all go into medicine is to try to help people out.”
Poulter compares XLIF to the revolution in knee surgery 20 years ago when doctors went from opening up the knee with a big incision and flipping back the kneecap to going in and doing everything arthroscopically. XLIF uses a retractor that allows surgeons to go in through the side and work on the spine, fusing discs and un-pinching nerves.
Read the full article: Hoops hero Bill Walton bounces back from crushing spinal condition
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