By Hemesh Patel
Daily Bruin Staff
A UCLA physician has developed a new 30-second treatment for a
herniated disk ““ a disorder that causes nerve damage because
of a displaced disk in the backbone.
Dr. Edward Tobinick, assistant professor of medicine, used this
method on five patients over the last year.
“I think it will work nearly 100 percent of the
time,” Tobinick said of his discovery, which will be more
widely publicized next week. “All five patients have
responded beautifully ““ it’s miraculous.”
The disorder mostly affects people between the ages of 25 to 45.
Hundreds of thousands of people each year are inflicted with
herniated disk, according to Tobinick.
Six months ago, NBC technical director Steve Garelick was at
third base playing softball when he jumped and hit his heel on the
base trying to catch a ball from the outfield.
As he hit his heel, his spine compressed, crunching the
vertebrae in his lower back. A disk was squeezed out between two of
his vertebrae in a condition known as disk herniation.
Garelick said he endured extreme pain down one leg and on one
occasion, he could not step any more.
“I got stuck on my floor and I had to call the doctor in
the hallway,” he said.
After taking Tobinick’s injection, Garelick said he was
pain-free in 12 minutes and regained all the feeling back in his
foot.
In the past, the medication Tobinick used in his discovery was
intended to treat swelling that occurs throughout the body.
Tobinick was the first to patent and apply this method of
treatment for neurological disorders.
Prior to the discovery, it was commonly thought that the pain
caused by herniated disk was due to pressure on a nerve.
But recent research found that when the disk squeezes out
between the two vertebrae, a fluid is released containing a
chemical that causes nerve damage and pain.
Some physicians in the field, however, are not as enthusiastic
because they don’t see new approaches as effective as the
traditional treatments.
“In my opinion there have been many alternative treatments
to standard surgical treatments developed in the past and none have
really lasted the test of time,” said Dr. Duncan McBride,
chief of the neurosurgery at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
McBride helped develop a microsurgical technique to treat
herniated disk.
“I am somewhat skeptical because many horses have run this
race before,” McBride said.
But Tobinick said his new treatment is completely different from
others.
He predicts the injection, which currently costs under a
thousand dollars will become the preferred treatment for this
disorder.
“It will revolutionize the whole field, none of the other
treatments are uniformly successful and none have shown the need to
prevent surgery,” he said.
For more information on Tobinick’s treatment, call (310)
824-6199 or go to www.neurologicalcenter.com