CRPS Patient Healed Through Nerve Decompression Surgery by Dr. Tim Tollestrup
Dr. Tim Tollestrup’s patient Jason no longer suffers from CRPS thanks to nerve decompression surgeries.*
CRPS/RSD is a condition that is widely misunderstand. Patients often feel that they are destined to live a life in pain. But in reality, many of these patients can be helped through nerve decompression surgery. One such patient is Jason Russo. Jason agreed to share his story in hopes of helping others with CRPS/RSD.
Jason Russo was a young father who suffered a devastating injury to his right knee involving complete tears of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) and the medial collateral ligament (MCL).
After the injury, Jason underwent a seven hour surgery to repair the damaged right knee. When he came out of anesthesia he was in such excruciating pain in the right leg that he told the medical staff to cut his leg off to make the pain stop. In addition, both legs were numb from the waist down and he could not move them. There was no pain in the left leg, just the numbness and paralysis.
It took about two months for the numbness to resolve and the normal ability to move the left leg returned. The right leg was a much different story. By one month post-op, the pain in the right leg and foot had become so severe that that Jason would go into uncontrollable bouts of screaming. The pain became so severe that eventually he moved into the trailer on the back of their property because the pain would cause him to scream in agony throughout the night making it impossible for his wife and children to get any sleep. During this period of time, Jason could not even stand to have a breeze blow across the skin of the right leg.
Jason’s original orthopedic surgeon misdiagnosed the problem as “gout” and Jason suffered through a futile treatment regimen which did not help anything. At this point, his bewildered orthopedic surgeon referred Jason to pain management. He underwent two different series of injections into the spine which made the pain worse temporarily before coming back to baseline. Nothing gave him any relief, however.
Eventually, his pain management doctor diagnosed him with CRPS type I. CRPS is a diagnosis kind of like “Fibromyalgia” or “Irritable Bowel Syndrome.” The medical community has come up with this “diagnosis” for patients with pain problems like Jason’s which seem to be out of proportion with their physical condition and which no one can really figure out. Current medical teaching is that there is no cure for CRPS and that patients with this condition must learn to live with the chronic debilitating pain.
In reality, the vast majority of CRPS patients are just people who have one or more injured peripheral nerves which no one has been able to diagnose. Once the nerve injuries have been correctly diagnosed, the appropriate surgical treatment can be rendered and the patient can be relieved from their horrible pain.
This is what Dr. Tollestrup did for Jason. After carefully examining him and identifying the various nerve compression injuries that he had sustained,Dr. Tollestrup formulated a surgical plan. It required two separate operations to address all of the nerve pathology in Jason’s right leg. The operations basically consisted of multiple nerve decompression surgeries.
After relieving all the nerve pressure points in Jason’s right leg he is now essentially pain free and able to play with his children again and sleep in his own house again.
The bottom line is that probably 80-90% of CRPS patients can be surgically cured of their pain by correctly diagnosing and treating the injured nerves appropriately.
*Disclaimer
We do not guarantee any specific results or outcomes for surgery, should our practice work on your behalf. Information on this website may be used as a reference for successes we’ve achieved for our patients, and not as an assurance or guarantee for similar results in all instances.