Cervical disks in the neck are subject to wear and tear just like any other joints in the body. Five different types of disk problems are commonly found in older adults.  They are disk thinning, disk degeneration, disk bulging, disk herniation, and disk degeneration with bone spur formation. The bone spurs form from the body’s attempt to stop motion of the vertebrae (joints in the spine). These processes often cause narrowing of the canal of the spinal cord and cause pain because of cramping of the nerve roots that reside in the canal.

 

The first treatments for these problems are conservative, steroid injections, nerve root injections, acupuncture, chiropractic manipulation of the spine, medicines, braces, physical therapy, electrotherapy, and stress management.  If conservative treatments do not relieve the pain or the disk problems become worse, surgery might be recommended. Traditionally, an anterior cervical diskectomy and fusion are performed where the degenerated disk is removed, the patient’s own bone is used to fill the space, and the bone grows in to permanently fuse the space between the two vertebrae. This eliminates pain but motion is typically lost in that portion of the spine.

 

Two disk implants that have been used in and around the disk space with varying degrees of success are the Bristol disk and the Bryan disk. Cervical disks have undergone changes to make them more able to balance and carry the significant load that is carried by anatomical disks. The new artificial disks preserve motion and are designed to give a better fit and attachment to the vertebrae in a great range of vertebral sizes. Separate cervical plates and fusion are not needed. One is the Prestige and the other new disk implant is the Bryan, which are both made by Medtronic. The Bryan disk implant received FDA approval in June of 2009. The Bryan disk implant looks more like an anatomical disk and is one piece that should allow unlimited motion. It has a polyurethane center with titanium endplates. The Prestige was the first implant to be FDA approved and has screws that anchor it to the vertebrae and is a stainless steel, ball-and-trough configuration. It is made of a cobalt and chrome alloy and is designed from the original Bristol disk implant. Prodisc-C by Synthes Spine is another approved cervical disk implant. It has cobalt-chrome alloy endplates and a polyethylene inlay in a ball-and-socket design.

 

Other investigational cervical disk implants that have been designed are the NeoDisc by Cervitech, the Mobi-C by LDR Spine,  SECURE-C by Globus Medical, Kineflex-C by SpinalMotion.

Searching drugs.com can be intimidating because there are so many great features. I could write a 5-page paper on it because there are so many features. You can find the chemical ingredients, basic how-they-work descriptions, dosages, common uses, other uses and almost anything you could want to know when doing pharmaceutical research.  Go to the homepage and you can choose from the top 100 medications and click for a shorter description. Enter a drug into the search bar and you get results from which you can choose detailed, advanced, professional views, or med facts. Under professional and advanced, you can get dosage information, which can help when the drug or dosage you’re hearing is unclear. Dosing is found near the bottom of the description.

 

There are wildcard and phonetic searches especially for medical transcriptionists. “Drugs by condition” is helpful when dictation is unclear about the drug, but the condition is described. There are new medications listed in the lower right hand corner and a section where you can look up a picture of a pill. Similar drugs are listed alongside each other to help you find something that sounds like but you don’t know how to spell.

 

Also handy in the search box is a feature that is not apparent at first. If you put in a general condition to search, like cancer, the results will include several cancer-related medications. You can always click on the More Like This link at the end of the description to look for more choices. This is handy when you have limited knowledge about the subject you searching. You can put OTC or herbs or herbal, which will also give you related links. Drugs.com is also a great site for personal use of the above features.  You can research your own medications to find drug interactions and ingredients.

 

You can also search for new drugs in the search box and it will bring up newly-approved drugs. You can also find these under the In the Pipeline caption at the right bottom of the homepage or under New Drug Approvals on the left side. Click on Drug Classes on the left, and it will bring you to clickable captions of classifications, a good way to test yourself for those exams! There are links to a medical encyclopedia, interaction checker, pictures of pills, a link to support groups and forum on the home page.

 

So check out drugs.com.  Very few drugs have not been described in this wonderful online resource when I have looked. They even have a Veterinary Drugs section now.