Dr. Kenneth Light Relieves Severe Neck Pain For Woman After Accident

May 18, 2011 - PRLog -- San Francisco, CA - Back pain and neck pain can be extremely  debilitating for anyone. When the horse that Kendra Sayles was riding bucked, stumbled and fell on top of her during an exercise ride on a Colorado ranch last year, she soon realized that she was lucky to be alive. Kendra was left with multiple, life-threatening injuries including serious trauma to the vertebrae in her neck. She was unconscious for several hours with no one around, gradually dragging herself to a place where she was finally discovered and taken by ambulance to a hospital in the nearest town, then transferred to a larger hospital for assessment and surgery. In addition to her neck injury, all of Kendra’s ribs were broken, she had a collapsed lung, a broken hip and femur and other serious injuries. “My surgeons told my family that I might not survive,” she says.

Kendra underwent multiple procedures to address her injuries including fusion surgery which stabilized her neck but left her with restricted range of motion. The fusion procedure did little to diminish the debilitating pain, which Kendra describes as “intense periods of unbearable pain alternating with periods of excruciating pain”. “Even though I was placed on morphine and other drugs, the pain was indescribable,” she says. My doctors told me I had to learn to live with the pain. “I was only in my early 20’s, and I had a full and active life. Now I was in a state where I didn’t know if I wanted to live any longer; I was in a full body brace and the pain and confinement was so unbearable. I knew I could not accept living like this.”

Over the following months Kendra began to research spine surgeons, especially those who perform revision procedures.

Finally, Kendra came across a number of articles and news stories on San Francisco spine surgeon Dr. Kenneth Light, who specializes in primary and revision spine surgery. Kendra conducted more research on Dr. Light and began to correspond with him, sending dozens of medical mages of her neck injury. When Dr. Light told Kendra that he might be able to improve her condition, she scheduled a procedure to correct her previous surgery. Dr. Light told Kendra that although he couldn’t make any guarantees, there was a good chance that he could relieve Kendra’s chronic pain and headaches along with the benefit of restoring some range of motion to her neck.

Dr. Light specializes in cases considered "hopeless," cases so severe that other physicians consider them beyond treatment. "Never give up hope" is Dr. Light's motto. "I don't believe in giving up on patients until I've tried everything possible to help them," he says. "When you're affecting the way people live their lives, you can't justify doing anything less."

Dr. Light determined that a portion of Kendra’s neck did not need to be fused in the first place, so during the procedure he removed part of the apparatus used in the previous fusion, allowing for a more natural range of motion in her neck to be restored.

Kendra says that she noticed a difference as soon as she awoke from the anesthesia -  the pain was gone. It’s now been a month since Kendra’s revision surgery and she is well on her way to enjoying a greatly improved quality of life. She says that her debilitating pain has been relieved and she can now move her head more normally. “It’s amazing how much you move your head in everyday life, when you’re driving a car or just talking with someone’: she says. “You don’t notice it until you lose that range of motion. I feel so fortunate to have found Dr. Light,” she says.

Dr. Light says that correcting a previous neck or back surgery can be difficult. “You must remove the hardware used in the previous procedure without causing any further injury to the affected area,” he says. “Then you start over again to fix the original problem. The best neck or back surgeries are those that are done well the first time.”

For more information visit www.drkennethlight.com or call 415.673.4500.
Dr. Light is featured in a recent T.V. news story in San Francisco:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQXTg2kwr2o



Dr. Kenneth Light graduated from the Cornell University College of Medicine in New York City. He completed his residency in Orhopaedic Surgery at the University of California in San Francisco., and completed a fellowship in spinal surgery under the guidance of Edward H. Simmons at the State University of New York in Buffalo.

Dr. Light was director of the spine clinic at San Francisco General Hospital, and was founder and medical director of the San Francisco Spine Center at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery, is board certified with the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery and Assistant Clinical Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at University of California, San Francisco. He is currently in private practice in San Francisco where he specializes in reconstructive surgery in patients who have had failed back surgery.

Photo:
https://www.prlog.org/11498297/1