INPATIENT SURGERY

To which hospital will I be admitted?

Many of the spinal conditions causing leg and back, or neck, shoulder, and arm pain are treated with surgical procedures to reduce the magnitude of the patients symptoms. With current technologies, most spinal surgeries require general anesthesia for maintenance of airway control, patient safety, and simply due to the length of the procedure.

Therefore, physicians at the Center for Advanced Spinal Surgery of Southern Arizona maintain admitting privilliges at St. Mary's Hospital, and Northwest Medical Center. Our physicians hold courtesy privilliges at Tucson Medical Center, Tucson Heart Hospital, and St. Joseph's Hospital but do not admit patients there and do not perform any procedures at these facilities.

How long is the hospital stay?

The spinal surgeons at the Center of Advanced Spinal Surgery of Southern Arizona perform many of the standard spinal procedures including laminectomies, and fusions. All surgeries are done through small incisions whenever possible and this helps limit your hospital stay. Most patients are discharged within 24 hours from the surgery. This has several advantages including increased activity level at home, less risk of developing deep venous thrombosis, pneumonia, urinary tract, and wound infection.

What happens if I need a more complex operation?

If you are scheduled for a larger operation that addresses more complex problems such as spinal deformity, previous failed spinal surgery and spinal fusion surgery you may take a longer time to recover. At the hospital, appropriate consulting physician services, physical- and occupational therapists, social- and case management workers are available to help you recover, and to ease the transition back to your home via in- or outpatient rehabilitation, or a skilled nursing facility.

Where should I go if I have an emergency after surgery?

In general, you should return to the hospital where you had your surgery. Your medical record will be available to anyone coming on contact with you and staff members will be ultimately familiar with your previous medical and surgical history, treatments, and understand the problems you are currently having best. Please report to the emergency department and have the physician on call paged. During regular business hours, call our office so that we can facilitate your work up.

What procedures are being done at the hospital?

We perform single, and multilevel laminectomies, fusion surgeries via open, mini-open, and minimally invasive procedures at the hospital. Please check out the cervical and thoracolumbar laminectomy and fusion procedures listed under the inpatient surgery menu of the service section on this website for more information.