Re: Neck surgery and Chiari

February 19, 2001

Hi ,

I have chiari and had surgery 9/99. I can only answer that for my chiari

related problems--physical therapy has been a very necessary thing.

1. For some reason which I do not totally comprehend...(maybe someone else

in the group can comment on this)....The pressure chiari puts on the upper

spinal cord/brainstem/cerebellum, can cause rather extreme weakness and even

wasting of muscles of the shoulders and upper back and neck. Perhaps the

neck problems compress nerves/sc and can also cause this.

2.The weakness then means the muscles must stay in continuous spasm in order

to hold up the head or whatever. This is a nasty cycle where the spasm

makes pain and the pain reduces your activity and reduced activity makes you

weaker yet .....and so on

3. Then you have surgery and all those muscles are cut or stretched to do

the chiari surgery and wa la ....you are even weaker! and your nerves are

even more irritable... but hopefully you have got to the root of the problem

and taken the pressure off the brain and spinal cord and that with time and

therapy....things will improve.

4. The type of therapy is extremely individualized and it will depend on

how weak you are and it will probably need to address your whole body head

to toe. You will want to find a cervical spine specialist and a health club

with a warm pool/whirlpool.

5. You can perhaps regain better control of your muscle tone with therapy.

i have to get going now

meribeth in mi

surgery 9/99 still improving slowly

Neck surgery and Chiari

) Do people with chiari do

> neck physical therapy?

> I have a question that I have been wondering about. The new Dr. that saw

> me seemed very concerned about the surgery that was done on my neck

> (before I knew I had the chiari) as well as the chiari itself. As if this

> were two separate problems. It was a very extensive corpectomy surgery,

> with spinal fusion starting at C3 with 3 discs removed and then the

> fusion continued down to to C6 and 7 attached with cadaver bone and metal

> plates. Titanium woman! Just call me. His concern was that it was too

> much for me to handle having chiari now. He seemed amazed by how much

> metal was in my neck.

>

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