post-op anterior cervical fusion

[DAIRYO]

Hi, I am almost 9 weeks post-op from a multi-level anterior cervicl fusion. I am now in my second week of wearing a bone stimulator collar around my neck for 4 hours a day. Yesterday the same numbness and pain, though not at as high of a pain level as before my surgery, has slowly began to come back, this has me in total panic that something has slipped out of place or my screws and harware have come loose. Is it normal to be pain/numb and tingling free since I awoke from surgery, to only come back 9 weeks later? If you could give some insight on this I would greatly appreciate it. I dont go back for my 3rd post op visit until Feb. 13th.          

[painafterfusion]

A related discussion, thanks was started.

[painafterfusion]

i had surgery feb. 09 2009 and a week after surgery i started having sever pain in my right
arm. Before surgery the pain was in the left arm my surgeon said it was nerves coming back to life after being pinched of for so long and that is all he would say and it was giting worse so i buged him about it and told him it was bad and driveing me cray i had to go to the er where i live and they gave me a bunch of pain meds and it did nothing for the pain and then they gave me a sedativeand put me to sleep and put fentanly patch on me and the next day i had a mri done and seen the surgeon the day after that and for the 3 day i had the patch on i did not lay in bed and cry i told him this and he said there was no nothing that sould be hurting that bad and said come back in 4 weeks so i got a app with my family DR and he said that if it was the nerves healing it would be on the side that was hurt be for he sent me to neurogist and he said the same i got more test to do. do you think maybe the surgeon did something to some other nerves and if it is nerves can they be fixed

[Esteban Cheng-Ching, MD]

Thanks for using the forum. I am happy to address your questions, and my answer will be based on the information you provided here. Please make sure you recognize that this forum is for educational purposes only, and it does not substitute for a formal office visit with a doctor.
Without the ability to examine you and obtain a history, I can not tell you what the exact cause of your symptoms is or how to treat them. However I will provide some information.
Post-surgical pain and symptoms can happen, and the rate of recurrence, as well as the degree of improvement, sometimes will depend on the degree of severity prior to surgery, as well as the extend of the surgical procedure. However this is something difficult to predict.
When a patient has pain post-surgery, it could be from the previous abnormality, or from surgical related tissue inflammation in the local area (rare so far after the surgery). Also bleeding with formation of hematoma, as well as infection should be considered, specially if the pain and symptoms occur in the next few days after the surgery, and the symptoms are new, and not present before (also rare so far after the surgery).
I think that the fact that you were pain free previously, and now you are experiencing new pain warrants an evaluation to detect if the pain is something new, related to the surgery,  or related to your previous problem. You may not need any specific imaging and it may resolve, however you should discuss this with your surgeon.
I think you should contact your doctors sooner rather than later, and inform them about the new symptoms, in order to consider if they should see you sooner, and if you need any further imaging studies at this moment.