One of the most invasive surgeries you can have is a lumbar (back) or cervical (neck) fusion.  It involves a severely injured disc that is repaired by literally putting hardware in to your body.  While you can live a productive life after (Peyton Manning has had a cervical fusion) it’s a long road to recovery and you need your nerves to re-generate.

These surgeries are complicated and often fail.  Usually when they don’t work out it’s because of outside factors including bad luck.  If you smoke that can limit your ability to recover.

But every now and then we’ll get a call from someone who had a fusion and didn’t make a good recovery and it’s discovered that it’s because the screws that are put in to place are hitting the nerves in the patient’s back or neck.  This can lead to many problems including failed back syndrome.

If this happens and the problem is not caught and corrected (with a new surgery) quickly enough, permanent nerve damage can occur.  The technical term is hardware nerve impingement. This unfortunately means a lifetime of pain and diminished abilities. You can lose your ability to walk, have sexual relations, control your bowel movements and tremendous pain.

When these surgeries take place, your doctor is supposed to use special care and caution to make sure that this does not happen. After the surgery takes place, x-rays and MRI’s can tell if an error took place.

If this error does happen and is not corrected, it may be a medical malpractice lawsuit in Illinois.  It’s estimated that about 1 in 500 screws do get misplaced and of those, most are only off by a millimeter or two.  But 5-10% of those badly placed screws cause serious damage and those are the cases that need to be investigated.

If this has happened to you, we’d be interested in talking with you and connecting you with one of the attorneys in our state wide network.  These are complex cases and very few firms have a real track record of success with them.  There is no fee to talk to our staff of attorneys and every lawyer we recommend works on a contingency basis which means you never have to pay a penny unless the case is successful.

But most importantly, getting the right law firm in your corner can be the difference between winning and losing a case and giving yourself a chance at getting your life back.  We want to help you and are happy to talk to you at any time about any situation.