When someone needs spinal surgery, they may have a choice between neurosurgeons and Orthopedic Doctors in Panama City FL. Up until the past 25 years or so, neurosurgeons were the main doctors performing this type of operation. Since then, however, advances in technology have allowed orthopedic surgeons to do many of these operations as well. An orthopedic doctor may even specialize in a certain type of surgery, such as the cervical spine, which is the neck area, or the lumbar spine, which is the lower back.
Orthopedic Doctors in Panama City FL have completed medical school along with a surgical residency that provided them with extensive training and general surgical practice. After becoming qualified in general surgery, they could focus more on orthopedic surgery and master those techniques. A fellowship after the residency focuses entirely on orthopedic practice or even on a specialty within the practice. All this was accomplished before they became full-fledged surgeons who could work independently as attending physicians and be the lead doctor on surgical teams.
During the residency, Orthopedic Doctors worked on various parts of the musculoskeletal system and gained hands-on practice with patients having a broad range of orthopedic problems. They not only gained experience operating on the spine, but on limbs, joints and hands. They encountered patients with sports and work injuries, joint deterioration due to arthritis, congenital disorders and other issues. Patients may have needed an operation to relieve pressure on a compressed disc, to replace a knee or hip joint, or to resolve a congenital spinal deformity such as scoliosis. Some of these operations are minimally invasive while others are quite extensive.
All of this means that doctors at Panhandle Orthopaedics are completely equipped to do spinal surgery along with various other types of musculoskeletal operations. They offer surgical procedures such as sacroiliac joint fusion and discography and non-surgical procedures such as spinal decompression. Sometimes certain types of injections provided by orthopedic physicians can resolve problems and avoid the need for surgery. For instance, greater occipital nerve block injections involve injecting corticosteroids or other medications to treat migraine headaches. Facet joint injections in the spine can relieve pain and inflammation.
