Call us at 281-633-8600 for an appointment. In this article, Dr. J. Michael Bennett and his guest, Dr. Benoy Benny talk about neck and spine care, including the use of scoliosis braces for children. This article is based on a Dr. Jay Show on 1560TheGame.
This is a transcript of a Doctor Jay Show broadcast on 1560TheGame in Houston, TX. Dr. J. Michael Bennett is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and a Fellowship Trained Sports Medicine Physician serving patients from Katy, Fort Bend County, Metro Houston and Southeast Texas from offices in Sugar Land and in Houston, near the Houston Galleria. Call 281-633-8600 for an appointment in Sugar Land and 713-234-3152 in Houston.
Our special guest for the show was Dr. Benoy Benny. He is a physical medicine rehabilitation physician, and he is board certified for pain and spine as well as for minimally invasive procedures in spine. He’s also a professor at Baylor College of Medicine. Bob Lewis of 1560TheGame is also a guest on the show.
Here’s the transcript of the ninth section of the Show:
Omega 3s for Head & Neck Injuries
DR. J. MICHAEL BENNETT: I think you’re going to see more changes in regards to neck and head injuries within the sports and youth programs that are out there and there’s even some studies that are looking at Omega 3s as far as inflammation and decreasing head and neck trauma because taking Omega 3s helps protect some of the nerve sheaths – I guess the myelin sheaths within the nerves themselves – and prevents them from becoming damaged. Do you have any thoughts on any of those topics there?
DR. BENOY BENNY: I think the way that science is moving we’re going to get a lot more into these biochemical and immunological factors and growth factors that we’re going to start talking about in terms of injecting it around discs and around the spine that will actually help to cure things rather than going into these big, huge fusions and operations in the future. That’s where the spine world is really moving into. The two main organizations that I’m involved in – the North American Spine Society and the International Spine Interventional Society – are going into these growth factors and these new chemicals in terms of injecting it into these discs to actually help growth back into it. The steroid use post-injury is key especially when these athletes are having any neurological changes after that. As soon as they can, if they can get into the ER and they give them the steroids or even before that will really help to reduce any neurological changes that can happen.
DR. J. MICHEAL BENNETT: I think Danny Arnold would find it very interesting about the whole growth thing especially when it comes to like height. Do you have anything like that? [laughter] I’m probably going to get a phone call from Danny here in a minute.
Use of Scoliosis Braces for Children
Anyway, as far as the mothers, the pediatric population out there, you have a child with a little bit of a curvature in their back or you see a little bit of a rib hump or something like that or a hunchback, what do you think about scoliosis and when should that mother or that child come in for an evaluation and what are the typical treatments and what are your thoughts about bracing in regards to spine curvatures and deformities?
DR. BENOY BENNY: One of the things that I think the schools are doing a lot better in now is a lot of health checkups that students have to go through. So a physician will come in or they’ll have to go and see their doctor to be able to check on that. That’s one of the things that I will do when a young adolescent comes in is to make sure that they don’t have scoliosis. Now it depends on their age, really. If they’re young and you’re already observing some scoliosis, that child really needs to be evaluated on a fairly frequent basis to make sure that the progression is not worse. If it is worse and it’s getting worse really fast that’s somebody that may end up needing to go to surgery. But if they’re already 18 or 21 years old and they have a mild scoliosis, that’s something that just can be watched. Bracing in general, we don’t really support it except if it’s really extreme because it tends to put a little bit of the thought process in the mind of not using your muscles, so you don’t want to use it that often.
DR. J. MICHAEL BENNETT: Alright, well I appreciate you guys for tuning in. That’s all for us today. Saturdays with Dr. Jay. Once again want to give a quick shout-out to the Texas Sports Medicine Institute for sponsoring us here. If you have any other questions, feel free to check out our website: www.jmichaelbennet.com or Dr. Benny’s website at www.cssare.com
We’ll see you next week.
