Doctors successfully performing spinal surgeries at Luis Hospital
Published: January 30, 2012
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ST. CROIX - Luis Hospital now is offering spinal surgeries.
Dr. Deborah Appleyard, an orthopedic spine surgeon, performed spinal surgery - a procedure called a decompression and fusion - last week on three patients.
"The surgeries themselves went great," Appleyard said. "We had every piece of equipment we needed, and the staff at the hospital really came together and did an excellent job."
One of the patients, Theresa Petersen, 76, had the surgery on Monday and was on her way home from the hospital Friday evening to continue recuperating.
"I'm feeling good," Petersen said Friday.
The patients who had the surgery were in different states of health going in, and were at different levels of risk for post-operative complications, Appleyard said, noting that not all of the patients who were operated on would be going home so quickly.
"They're recovering," she said. "They're doing as expected."
She explains all the risks and benefits before surgery, so that a patient can make an informed decision, she said.
"Everybody who comes into a surgeon's office is different, and even if the procedure is the same, the individual is where the risk factor is," she said.
Appleyard performed the surgeries to relieve the patients' severe spinal stenosis, she said.
The spinal canal, where the spinal cord and nerves are, can become narrowed by arthritis, causing pressure and pain and making it difficult for a person to walk, Appleyard said.
During a decompression and fusion surgery, the pressure is relieved, and then the bone is fused to create stability if there is any deformity, instability or slippage in the joints, she said.
Petersen said that before the surgery she had been having a lot of pain in her lower back and hips, which made it difficult to walk, stand or sit down for any length of time.
When Petersen decided to have the surgery, she started praying "for the doctor to be successful and for me to have a successful surgery," she said.
She was up and walking the day after surgery and is getting physical therapy, she said.
"I'm in the process of healing now. I don't know how long it will take," Petersen said. "I don't know what the future holds, but for now I am glad."
She thanked those in her church who prayed for her.
"I give God the praise and the thanks," she said.
Appleyard moved to St. Croix in August and has been working with the hospital to get the equipment necessary to do the spinal surgeries.
"This is just the start of it," she said, noting that the hospital plans to routinely offer spine surgeries. "We plan to be available to patients to do spine surgery here."
A guest surgeon - a former colleague of Appleyard's from North Carolina - flew in to assist with the surgeries last week.
She wanted to have another spine surgeon there for extra patient safety until an assistant is trained in the specifics of spine surgery, she said.
"We wanted to make sure everything goes very, very well," she said.
Although Luis Hospital has, in the past, offered surgeries for awhile that it stopped offering in fairly short order, such as neurosurgery several years ago and, more recently, open heart surgery.
Appleyard said the spine surgery program is different and is sustainable.
"The difference is that typically spine surgery is done in community hospitals," she said. There is enough volume to sustain the program, she said.
People experiencing the kinds of back problems on whom Appleyard can perform surgery typically been referred off-island for that kind of care.
"The idea of doing this is to bring a service here that people really need," Appleyard said. "I've seen a lot of patients who have gone a long time, living with the pain" because they can not or do not want to go off-island for care.
"There is this need out there and there are people who don't know where else to turn. It's very important that we provide that for people on this island who don't know where to turn," she said.
Staff training will be ongoing, she said, noting that she was "more proud than ever" of the doctors and nurses at Luis Hospital who worked together with the first patients who had the procedure.
"I'm 100 percent committed to this island," she said.
- Contact Joy Blackburn at 714-9145 or email jblackburn@dailynews.vi.
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