• Facebook Page: 133796423311952
  • Twitter: apex_spine
  • YouTube: ApexSpine

Latest news

Feel free to use our
professional
pre-diagnostic
within 48h

Back pain

start1

Not always back pain is caused by pathological changes of the intervertebral disc. And a herniated disc does not always provoke symptoms.

More on: Back pain

Neck pain

start2

Degenerative symptoms in the neck region are on the rise - not only due to increasingly static working conditions like at a computer workplace but also due to whiplash injuries.

More on: Neck pain

Slipped disk

start3

Weakness or numbness in the leg or foot, however are warning signals for a more serious condition.

More on: Slipped disk

Spine surgery

start4

If severe pain and neurological symptoms are irresponsive to conservative treatment, a disc surgery may be required.

More on: Spine surgery

Munich doctor helps ski star get back on the slopes

The popular English freeskier Warren Smith took a trip to Munich last week. The reason for this was not a short break or a performance-show, but a disc surgery at one of the world's leading spine surgeons in endoscopic surgical techniques - Dr. Michael Schubert from the Munich Apex Spine Center.

The diagnosis of a "large lumbar disc prolapse" is twice as bad for a professional athlete like Warren Smith (39): not only activities in private life, but also his professional duties can be significantly affected.

The internationally acclaimed instructor and one of the best professional off-piste skiers traveled to Munich to the Apex Spine Center the day before his birthday, to go under the knife of Dr. Michael Schubert. The Munich doctor successfully removed endoscopically the slipped disc from the spinal canal of the ski star under local anesthesia and concomitant sedation. After only one night hospital stay, Smith could return home on his birthday. For two weeks, the professional athlete will have to carry a supportive brace, within six weeks he will be able to race down the slopes again.

Warren Smith confided his health to the experienced hands of Dr. Schubert, who carries out the gentlest disc surgery in the world at the Munich Apex Spine Center. The intervention can be done without general anesthesia. "Thanks to this unique surgical method, a herniated disc in the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine can be treated as gently and at such a low risk as never before," says spine surgeon Dr. Michael Schubert. Instead of an open procedure through a five-to eight-inch long cut, for the new procedure only a very small incision for a 2.5 mm working channel will do. The slipped disc material is removed within 30 to 45 minutes with minute instruments. The tools that are necessary for this kind of intervention have been developed by the spine specialist himself.

Warren Smith is not the first professional athlete who was treated by Dr. Schubert in this way. The German rowing world champion Matthias Schömann-Finck suffered from a severe lumbar herniated disc in 2010. All conservative treatments failed, a rehab did not help – he found relief only when he lay on the operating table of Dr. Schubert. How fit he is again, became obvious when the athlete together with his teammates made it up to the World Cup semifinals in the coxless four this year in Bled, Slovenia.

Dr. Schubert has carried out this minimally invasive surgery successfully in more than 5000 patients. As complicated postsurgical care, extended hospital stays and long recovery times can be avoided with this method, the overall treatment costs are also much lower than for conventional disc surgery.

Franziska Kremtz

Photo: Warren Smith (left) was able to leave the Munich APEX SPINE Center already one day after his disc surgery by Dr. Michael Schubert (right). (Source: Warren Smith, Apex Spine Center)

You are here Startseite

Links

orthopedics
health
internet
various

News Ticker