Taipei City Government

Clinic from the Family Medicine in the Zhongxiao Branch of Taipei City Hospital due to his disregard of shoulder soreness, which finally led to cervical compression and right hand weakness. After Lin Muxi, director of the Neurosurgery Clinic, performed the cervicaldecompression operation the man recovered completely.
According to the patient, he only felt tightness in the neck at the beginning, until one day the right upper limb became weak suddenly and couldn’t be controlled. As the patient works in China, he went to a local hospital but the condition didn’t improve. Eventually, he came to the Neurosurgery Clinic in the Zhongxiao Branch of Taipei City Hospital.
Through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), it was found that the intervertebral disc (commonly known as bony spur) of the patient was thick and heavy, which compressed the cervical nerve and caused the weakness of the right upper limb. After passing the medical material pre-review procedure of the National Health Insurance Administration, the anterior cervicaldecompression operation was performed to place the vertebral body stent and install vertebral fixing plates, enabling the right upper limb to move freely. At present, the patient has been discharged from hospital successfully.
Lin Muxi, director of the Neurosurgery Department, expresses that spinal degeneration is a common and troublesome disease, and most of the patients will suffer from spinal degeneration and bone spurs owing to long-term bad posture and poor habit, which compresses the spinal nerve. The pain cannot be alleviated until the compression is removed from the spine.
Therefore, Dr. Lin reminds that the initial symptoms of bone spurs, protrusion of intervertebral discand so on are only neck soreness, lower back pain and fatigue, followed by hand and foot numbness and weakness and unstable gait, which finally cause urinary incontinence and even general paralysis. Mild symptoms will develop into serious ones. We should not take these symptoms lightly, and should receive the decompression operation at the early stage.