Tiger Woods comes back and wins the Masters
April 27, 2019
The amazing result and success of Tiger Woods has been applauded by all. His perseverance and his efforts to get past this shows a true professional athlete. I would like to bring up something that has been missed.
- His first spine surgery was performed in April 2014.
- The second spine surgery the following Spring.
- Incredibly, the third spine surgery was performed in October of that year.
These were all minimally invasive spine surgeries done by a Dr. Charles Rich, a Neurosurgeon in Park City, Utah. I have to believe there was minimal or no neurological deficit because with a neurological deficit, the leg pain gets better and they do well. If this is pure back pain with an image based diagnosis on a MRI; a bulging disc, as far as I’m concerned this explains the failure.
The failure to diagnose the pain generator. In this case the pain generator was the L5 – S1 disc. This was proven without a shadow of a doubt by Dr. Richard Guyer at the Texas Back Institute who performed a spinal fusion at this level to stop the motion. The collapse of the disc is irrelevant. If Tiger had neurological problems after the fourth surgery then this needed to be done of course.
I have performed thousands of spinal fusions myself and understanding the diagnosis is really paramount to success. As Albert Einstein famously said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
I feel for the patients who undergo these surgeries inappropriately with anesthesia, time off of work and failure. How many of these patients end up in Pain Management? Tigers Woods went to Pain Management and ended up with a DUI conviction and was caught driving with narcotics in his system about 2 years ago outside his home in Florida.
In 2017, I put together an article titled It’s not Tiger Wood’s fault. This was the failure of the medical community to adequately take care of a very trusting professional athlete. Despite the lack of care, the lack of 3 incorrect correct surgeries, Tiger Woods has prevailed. God bless him for moving and I feel this is a lesson we all need to learn.
Remember that Neurosurgeons are like electricians. They are Nerve doctors and don’t understand biomechanics or where pain generators come from and everything is centered around a pinched nerve. This is why the flawed decision making occurred in Tiger Wood’s first 3 surgeries based on an image only.
I would love to know what the clinical findings were.
- Was there a straight leg raise that was positive?
- Was there an absent reflex?
- Could he not walk on his toes or his heels?
- Was there a functional neurological loss or was it based on an image and more back pain then leg pain?
I think that we need to understand that the Orthopedic Spine Surgeon is a bio-mechanical professional and they understand where the pain generator comes from and stabilizing the correct spine segment relieves the patient of pain they are experiencing with a very successful outcome, and I think that is evident by Tiger Wood’s comeback.
