While we recognize not everyone reading RMBSI’s blog includes Santa Claus in their winter celebrations, we all should be gravely concerned about the various neurosurgical issues the Big Guy may manifest. The monk, Saint Nicholas, was born in an unknown month of 280 AD in modern-day Turkey. So this year he would be ~ 1,739…
“So over at the VA, they had to replace it with plastic. It ain’t as strong, so I don’t know if I oughta go sailin’ down no hill with nothin’ between the ground and my brains but a piece of government plastic” -Cousin Eddie, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation For some neurological conditions, including infection, tumor…
“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” – Mark Twain I often get asked by my patients, “At what point will I NEED surgery?” In the setting of weakness or numbness, cervical surgery may be offered sooner than later. This is also true if there is compression of the…
In May 2018, Governor Hickenlooper signed Senate Bill 18-22 Clinical Practice for Opioid Prescribing. This limits the number of opioid pills a healthcare provider can prescribe and provides an outline for opiate management. From a surgeon’s perspective, we almost never provide preoperative opioids. After surgery, we try to incorporate ERAS (enhanced recovery after surgery) techniques…
This week’s blog will completely focus on Thanksgiving and skip the roundabout link to neurosurgery we usually try to include. “….and he realized as he spoke that the truth was slipping away from him, and soon he would no longer know what the truth was.” Paraphrased from Leo Tolstoy’s, War and Peace How did you…
Rocky Mountain Brain & Spine Institute has previously published blogs on stem cell therapies for back symptoms. If you haven’t read those blogs, here’s the quick “Cliff’s Notes”… stem cells don’t work. However we have always given the caveat that “if” stem cells were ever to work, then it would be a great treatment option…
The Berlin Wall separated East and West Germany from 1961 to 1989. Following World War II in 1945, what remained of Germany was divided into four occupation zones, controlled by the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and the USSR/ Soviet Union. Berlin was also subdivided into 4 sections, however, the city was fully within…
A tumor occurs when a cell starts rapidly replicating in an uncontrolled fashion. In some cancers in the body, as the tumor forms, the normal surrounding cells are just pushed to the side. While the patient may succumb to cancer because it metastasizes to too many areas, an individual tumor site may be amenable to…
In November 1993, Kurt Cobain’s legendary band, Nirvana, recorded their performance MTV Unplugged in New York. It was released on November 01, 1994. “Come As You Are was the 2nd track. This year the album is getting a 25th-anniversary vinyl reissue. While Nirvana formed in 1987, it was the 1991 album, Nevermind, which featured “Smells…
As we prepare for Halloween, many households will hang skeleton pictures, skeleton mobiles and even wear skeleton shirts. But how accurate are the Halloween execs at teaching anatomy? The human spine has 33 vertebrae. There are usually 7 cervical bones, 12 thoracic bones, 5 lumbar bones, 5 sacral bones, and 4 coccygeal bones. Most humans…