The Neck Pain Guide: Answering Your Most Common Questions About Neck Pain, Diagnosis, and Cervical Spine Surgery

Dr. George M. Ghobrial's handbook for neck pain encompasses all aspects of diagnosis and care of acute and chronic neck pain: early and late management, resources, facilities, physicians and other healthcare providers and their roles, medication, physical therapy, imaging, as well as surgical and nonsurgical treatments. The Neck Pain Guide follows the recently published book of the Spine Health Learning Series, The Low Back Pain Guide (2019), with the goal to answer the most common questions encountered in the clinic and emergency department about neck pain. Using over 60 illustrations, Dr. Ghobrial introduces the anatomical and clinical issues related to degenerative disorders of the spine in a clear manner, explaining many terms such as disc herniations, spondylosis, degenerative disc disease, radiculopathy, and more. Topics include: common diagnostic imaging techniques such as X-ray, CT, MRI, as well as spinal injections, physical therapy, electrodiagnostic testing, discectomy, foraminotomy, laminotomy, fusion, disc replacement, scoliosis, bracing, minimally-invasive surgery, endoscopic surgery, laser spine surgery, and other emerging topics such as 'stem cell' injections and more.Suffering From Acute Neck and Arm Pain? Overwhelmed by the vast treatment options and not sure which to start with, or where to go? The Neck Pain Guide is a unique and comprehensive reference to assessing acute neck pain. Learn about concerning red flag symptoms, understand the available resources, and learn commonly avoidable options such as opiates and early imaging and invasive pain treatments.Nearly 100 of the most common questions asked by patients in the clinic, are answered in a clear manner, including over 200 references for easy review. Dr. Ghobrial reinforces a system that may help patients organize and guide their own care more efficiently, limit redundancy and waste, and expedite their journey to alleviate pain. Moreover, this guidebook teaches a basic process to confidently assess the evidence behind healthcare and advertising treatment claims, including research. These techniques for organization and rapid assessment are useful not only with neck pain, but for any aspect of care and also for the rapid emergency of new technologies and treatments, ultimately building confidence in managing one's own healthcare. This book is ideal for all audiences interested in learning more about the basics of neck pain management, modern healthcare treatments, and a strategy to get better. Having a medical background is not necessary to understand this book as the goal of this work is to educate patients and provide them with all the information in the same place, and to organize that information into a question and answer reference. Since not everyone has the precious free time to read lengthy nonfiction books on a single technical subject, this book is organized to allow for questions and topics to be more rapidly found among the table of contents and index, directing the reader to a helpful explanation and illustration. Despite being a highly prevalent healthcare problem in North America (also worldwide), there are no comprehensive, patient-centered books that cover the full scope of modern back pain management, which was the motivation for providing the Low Back Pain and Neck Pain Guides. Also, unlike the majority of patient-centered educational materials, a truly unique perspective is shared, which is that of a neurosurgeon with expertise and fellowship training in spinal surgery. This book will emphasize non-surgical treatments, since they comprise the majority of spinal care. The author, is a fellowship-trained spinal surgeon and neurosurgeon with an interest in public health and education.With that in mind, this book is for patients who wish to demystify neck and low back pain, critically assess their healthcare options, and maximize informed decision making.