Military Veteran Chooses DLDR® Over Disc Replacement
Summary
A patient from California and military veteran shares his experience less than 24 hours after undergoing Deuk Laser Disc Repair® at Deuk Spine Institute for chronic neck pain and arm symptoms caused by herniated discs at C5–6 and C6–7. After years of trauma, military service, worsening nerve pain, and being advised to undergo disc replacement or fusion, he sought a less invasive solution. Using a 4mm endoscopic, bloodless laser procedure, the herniations and disc tears were treated without metal implants or fusion. He describes immediate relief, restored mobility, and renewed quality of life—highlighting why minimally invasive endoscopic spine surgery is a true alternative to traditional spine fusion.
Transcript
Dr. Deukmedjian: And good morning I'm Dr. Deukmedjian, CEO and founder of the Deuk Spine Institute I'm here with one of my patients who traveled from California with a problem in his neck. He's been having pain, it radiates down into his left arm he has some other issues as well like pinched nerves in the elbow and palm which he's treating in California. For the herniated discs at C5-6 and C6-7 we did the Deuk Laser Disc Repair® yesterday. You can see me going in with the endoscope and the laser it's all done with a 4mm incision bloodless surgery and outpatient and here he is less than 24 hours later, and he wants to share his story with you, so go ahead.
Patient: Okay, so the first thing I want to do is give Dr. Deuk a joke that I wrote last night. He's going to understand this, we might have to look some of these things up. A neurosurgeon was performing several radio frequency ablations on patients when he started hearing loud shouts and screams in the recovery room. Shocked he walked into the room to see what happened. The nurse ran up to him, "Doctor things got pretty heated up for a while, but no one had the nerve to say anything. That one over there seems especially nerveless." All right so I got him to laugh good stuff okay.
Dr. Deukmedjian: I love it.
Patient: What happened for me was, ever since I was a kid, I was the young kid that fell off the high chair when I was 2 years old, fell down the staircase when I was four, got tripped hit the back of the sandbox at 6, I went in the military I parachuted out of planes hit, my head more than once with a Kevlar helmet then served in the military wearing Kevlar helmets sometimes banging my head against Heavy Artillery pieces. Sometimes I didn't have my helmet on sometimes just the weight of the helmet was hurting my neck in my back.
Dr. Deukmedjian: That part about banging your head in the in the plane against Heavy Artillery pieces, sometimes you hear in the military like a helicopter went down right suddenly exploded went down, now I know why.
Patient: Well you know I mean that people will say why would you jump out of a perfectly normal airplane but you know let me just tell you, low Contour flying by the sea, some of the Jets there makes things a little bit tough and then after that what I started to notice, I started to develop; where my muscles in the back just became really severely tense and stressed out I kind of thought it was work and otherwise and then when I'd go to things like the dentist and I'd lean my head back my entire left arm would just start tingling and sparks shooting out like crazy, and when I got back up things were better. But then I went on a trip back in early May, and then it was happening all the time at that point I got an MRI done you know obviously at that point I went to my primary care and I had options there were five options really. If you think about it, one was do nothing just hey I'm getting older just deal with it you know stop being a baby and just you know life goes on. Number two maybe seek physical therapy or chiropractic care which I did, and it helped for some things I had really bad posture, that was one of my issues, but it wasn't taking away the problems that I was having with the tingling doc. So then, I started to seek out medical expertise uh in Los Angeles First Choice was full disc replacement for both the discs the way I was thinking about disc replacement was it's kind of like having a car the tires are halfway worn down you having problems with one of the tires in the back and you decide to replace it with a bigger tire that's different tread, different braking system, it's going to work if you're riding on a regular road or highway, but it's something different and that's working there and it was never made for the car.
Dr. Deukmedjian: You'd be replacing it not with a different tire but a metal Tire.
Patient: Yeah, a metal Tire even worse, exactly, a tank tread.
Dr. Deukmedjian: Yeah, and then you can't do MRIs or you got to find the ceramic one which you can, okay.
Patient: So, that was disc replacement that didn't sound attractive. ACDF, I've got some dear friends that have done ACDF. Problem there was I was thinking of that same car analogy now you got the rear tires are locked in place they only go straight they break at the same time the suspensions are the same and only the front two are moving around and I was worried about what is the effect on the disc above and below and my mom had this problem she had lumbar fusion with rods in her back and then she ended up having a lumbar fusion and the upper ones when she was alive and that poor woman went through a lot of pain for it. So I was figuring hey look, I'm a guy that works in technology there's got to be a better solution to this and I just started doing research online there's got to be someone. I was very grateful that I came across Deuk Spine Clinic I must have watched about 15 of his videos I started to watch some of the procedures before I started freaking out just looking at that stuff just, not my thing. I'll stay in technology, but one of the things I found immediately that endeared me to me Dr. Deukmedjian was the people that sat in this chair you could just see what he was doing and how he was helping him and I knew I'd found the right person that could help me. Was that easy doc.
Dr. Deukmedjian: Awesome you know well you persevered, you were uncompromising, you wouldn't settle for what you were being told. Which is let's go in and put metal in your neck and we've talked about this you're aware that there's a big problem in spine with the industry that produces metal pushing these implants on the patients through the surgeons the surgeons are the ones that recommend it and the surgeons are rewarded financially in several ways for doing that. Problem is it is not the best treatment it used to be the best treatment but now we've made progress we do the laser surgery that is the best treatment, and you've had it. I told you before surgery you know it may not work because you got some bone spurs, but you told me this morning that you don't have that pain anymore.
Patient: Yeah I do not, and it's, I can't even describe it because it's a sort of ease that I haven't had probably for more than 10 years at least. I don't even know how long I've been dealing with these just and again the electroshock and everything else it's been a blessing and certainly having you take care of me and I'll tell you what doc you know one of the things I'm going to try to do is see you know are what can we do with the government. I mean you know it doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on but maybe there's ways to talk to folks in the government to get more attention to these kinds of things because, what I'm afraid of, I found you cuz I looked really hard, and I did all the research. There's a lot of wonderful people out there that they just don't know they're really limited on their options.
Dr. Deukmedjian: Of course the problem is the absolute truth which people don't want to hear is the government is controlled by Big Business yeah and there is no business in the world bigger than insurance companies they are the most powerful they've brought the pharmaceutical industry to its knees they brought the medical industry to its knees and the insurance companies just sit in the back they take your money every month with premium payments and then they don't pay their bills and they keep the money and then become richer and richer and more powerful the insurance companies do not want my surgeries out there because they work and they know what's going to happen everybody is going to want it and that is going to be like what do you call it a run on the yeah run on the market kind of thing exactly. Yeah, everyone's going to want it they're going to get all these bills and they're going to have to pay them and it's going to be in the center of attention all these people are going to be complaining they're not paying the bills insurance companies do not want new technologies that work they want patients to only have old technology that doesn't work that they're afraid of because there's nothing better for an insurance company than a patient who's scared to have a medical treatment there the patient won't get it done there won't be a bill for the insurance company to pay they get to keep the money and they don't have to be the bad guy denying payment yeah.
Patient: And Doc you were saying also that overseas folks uh have embraced technologies like what you're able to provide right?
Dr. Deukmedjian: That's correct yeah if you go to China, India, Korea they don't do much fusion they do mostly endoscopic surgery because it's better and in the United States. I'm, there's only probably five surgeons in the whole United States that do true endoscopic surgery some of them advertise it, but they don't actually do it a lot. That needs to happen we're probably 30 to 50 years ahead of the rest of the spine surgeons out there in terms of treating spine issues that are degenerative and joint issues that are degenerative, but I appreciate you sharing your perspective thanks so much, congratulations.
Patient: I appreciate it, thank you.
The Better Way: Deuk Laser Disc Repair® (DLDR)
For patients suffering from debilitating neck pain with multiple herniated discs, my revolutionary procedure—Deuk Laser Disc Repair® (DLDR)—offers a safer way to alleviate pain without risk of collateral damage, as it avoids the muscles, nerves, ligaments, tendons, and joints. Unlike disc replacement or ACDF fusion that use metal hardware and restrict natural movement, DLDR® preserves full neck mobility while permanently eliminating pain. The procedure is performed endoscopically using a high-definition camera inserted through a tiny 4mm incision. A precision laser vaporizes the herniated tissue and cleans the disc tear. This is a bloodless, outpatient procedure with no hospitalization required. Patients experience immediate relief without the complications, movement restrictions, or MRI limitations associated with metal implants.