I am a neurosurgeon, and I'm here to tell you today that people like me need your help.
And in a few moments,I will tell you how.
But first,let me start off by telling you about a patient of mine.
This was a woman in her 50s,she was in generally good shape, but she had been in and out of hospital a few times due to curative breast cancer treatment.
Now she had gotten a prolapse from a cervical disc, giving her radiating pain of a tense kind,out into the right arm.
Looking at her MRI before the consultation,I decided to suggest an operation.
Now,neck operations like these are standardized,and they're quick.
But they carry a certain risk.
You make an incision right here,and you dissect carefully past the trachea,the esophagus, and you try not to cut into the internal carotid artery.
(Laughter) Then you bring in the microscope, and you carefully remove the disc and the prolapse in the nerve root canal,without damaging the cord and the nerve root lying only millimeters underneath.
