00;00;00;22 - 00;00;35;28 Cary And now America's health care advocate, Cary Hall. Hello, America. Welcome to America's Healthcare Advocate Show broadcasting coast to coast across the USA, from Alaska to Florida all the way to Hawaii. Our producer today, Ms.. Alicia Cox. I'm your host, Cary Hall. This is your show, America. Thank you for joining us and making us one of the most listened to talk shows throughout the United States. 294 affiliates strong all across the country. We thank all of you. All right. Joining us today by phone from Miami, Florida. Dr. Leon Anijar, welcome, doctor. Happy to have you on the show. 00;00;36;22 - 00;00;39;05 Dr Anijar Thank you so much for having me. It's a great pleasure to be here. 00;00;39;09 - 00;01;13;29 Cary Well, I think we're going to have a real good show today because we're going to be able to talk about, you know, we've done shows like this before, folks, on different topics. You may recall Dr. Sperling and the Sperling Prostate Cancer Treatment Center in Florida. We did a number of shows with him. We got a lot of feedback on those shows. A lot of people thought that was going to be very helpful, that we actually had some people get certified down there to get treatment. This is similar to that in terms of how they operate, what they do. It's a very different treatment program and I think you're going to enjoy learning about it and that's why we're doing this. 00;01;14;00 - 00;01;43;28 Cary So Dr. Anijar is a board board certified anesthesiologist and interventional pain management specialist who strongly believes that every person deserves to live a high quality, pain free life. He performs a full spectrum of pain management services ranging from regenerative therapies to epidural steroid injections and minimally invasive procedures to treat lower back pain, cervical neck pain, and conditions like peripheral neuropathy and complex regional pain symptoms. 00;01;44;07 - 00;02;43;13 Cary Dr. Anijar studied neuroscience and behavioral biology at Emory University. He went on to earn his medical degree at the University of South Florida, and he has published a number of articles on biomechanics and surgical oncology and medical information. His residency was done at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. Obviously well qualified in this field, Doctor. So let's just start off with, you know, I went up and I did a little research writing and looked around and it was kind of interesting. Some of the comments I saw were were that one of the things that really stuck out to me was that that you actually treat the pain. You don't try to cover it up. One of the ladies who is one of your patients wrote that on a review. So let's kind of start with what you do, how it is different. And then we can, you know, talk about some of the other things, like the difference between what you do and what surgeons do and what that conflict looks like. Let's start off with that, doctor. 00;02;44;05 - 00;03;57;02 Dr Anijar Yeah, sure. Thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here and to, you know, have the opportunity to share what I do with your view with your viewers and our listeners. So I would say the biggest difference between what an interventional pain physician does and what their spine surgeon does is interventional pain physician. So let me take a step back. Like if you go back about 20 years interventional pain, doctors really were just doing one or two injections, maybe prescribing some pain medication. And then once that kind of exhausted the the symptomatic relief they were, then refer the patient within referred to a spine surgeon for some more advanced therapy. And those are specifically the spine patients. In the last five or ten years, there have been massive innovations in the field. You now have the opportunity and the option to have something that's more than an injection but less than a spinal fusion to help address what's one of the more common causes of lower back pain. And that's typically a spinal stenosis or lumbar disc herniation in the neck patients that have had, you know, chronic migraines for decades and have tried and failed every type of over-the-counter and conservative therapy now have the option to directly treat the nerve that are causing their chronic migraine. 00;03;57;02 - 00;05;14;27 Dr Anijar We have patients I had one particular patient that I'm just remembering now. This guy was in the Navy was a Navy submarine captain for about 25 years. He had injured every bone in his body to the point where he couldn't even raise his arm to brush his teeth. He was subsequently referred to me by his primary care doctor because he had been seen by every orthopedic surgeon in Miami. Nobody wanted to operate on him because they felt he was too high risk because of the other comorbidities. But I knew that, you know, if I could just get him to raise his arms and, you know, do normal daily activity that would improve his quality of life pretty considerably. So now, though, the new therapy that came out about 4 to 7 years ago called peripheral nerve simulation, where we can actually place kind of like a pacemaker wire over the nerves of the shoulder to turn them on and off so that when he raises his arm, his pain, his appreciation of the pain is significantly less. We did that for him. I saw him in clinic a few weeks ago and he was, you know, kind of in a funny way, he was like taking his hat off to show me how he was able to improve his range of motion afterwards. And this is a patient that, you know, is far too sick for surgery, but this small procedure really made the biggest difference in his quality of life. So those are the things that get me excited. And, you know, the different options and opportunities that patients have, they get better. 00;05;14;27 - 00;05;31;09 Cary Now, you know, that's really interesting because, you know, the other thing I think about it because back surgeries have a success ratio that is in at least last time I checked is typically around about 50 or 60%. Is that reasonably correct to assume that. 00;05;32;24 - 00;06;51;23 Dr Anijar The problem with the problem with those kind of stats, unfortunately, is that I don't know that they parse it out based on the indication for the back surgery or for the type of physician performing that back surgery. You know, if you have a back problem, like let's say you have a a fracture in your spine or you have significant disc herniation, you know, if you go to a well-trained spine surgeon, you're probably going to get better. Right. That types of problems that we have is that physicians are probably over treating conditions that didn't require back surgery. And now we're learning that. So as a result, research is now being done on which patients benefit from which procedures. So as before, you were doing the same four or five types of surgeries for all people and not getting the best results. Now, spine surgeons are much more reluctant to offer large surgeries to patients for relatively minor condition. They're saying, hey, you know, if you would have come to me ten years ago, I probably would've done a lumbar fusion because I all I had. But now why don't we try X, Y and Z? Why don't I refer you to Doctor Anijar? Yeah, he can do minimally invasive distraction device, which is kind of a little mini carjack that you put it in the posterior element of your spine to open up the space, allow the nerve to breathe a little bit better. Maybe that'll give you some relief. And if you don't do better with that, why don't you come back and we can talk about other options? 00;06;51;23 - 00;07;21;01 Dr Anijar But now there's an appreciation for the variety and the breadth of opportunities, opportunities and options available to patients that just weren't around ten years ago, like back pain used to be, you know, the redheaded stepchild of medicine. Nobody wants to take care of acting patients, but it's such a huge untapped population of patients that were just suffering. And now there's really good way that we can treat them. And I can tell you, you know, a million stories. I can tell you one about my dad and his name get that way to be interested in it. 00;07;21;07 - 00;08;05;11 Cary That's fascinating. And, you know, I've talked about this on the broadcast before in terms of cancer and as we've had a number of cancer specialists on doctors who are renowned for their treatment facilities and where we've come the last ten years with cancer is remarkable. This is extremely similar to that. But I think it's something that's not that well known. And that's one of the reasons why I'm really glad you're doing this today is because we're able to get this information out to people and talk about the therapies and what you're doing. So when we come back, the break, we're going to continue this conversation. I'm going to ask doctor to talk about let's see if I can pronounce this percutaneous sacroiliac joint fusions. Did I get that right, Doctor? 00;08;06;01 - 00;08;06;24 Dr Anijar That was perfect. 00;08;06;25 - 00;08;45;05 Cary Was it? That's remarkable. Usually I stop. He is laughing over here and so is Lori. Okay. All right. So when I come back to talk more about that, we'll talk about some of these specific treatments that, again, how they differ. Then going in to have surgery and taking medications. If you want to learn more about Doctor, go to his website. LeonAnijarMD.com, and that's spelled A n i j a r, LeonAnijarMD.com website. All of that information is up there. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate. Broadcasting here on the HIA Radio Network, coast to coast across the U.S. We've got more. Stay tuned. 00;08;45;20 - 00;09;02;27 Speaker 3 ♪ People true love will be true, Oh tell me darling am I right. 00;09;03;29 - 00;10;11;02 Cary Welcome back. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate Show broadcasting coast to coast across USA here on the HIA radio network. You can find out more about us by going to our website: HealthRadio.us. HealthRadio.us. All right, out producer today, the always perfect Miss Alicia Cox. I'm your host, Cary Hall, joining us by phone from Miami, Florida, Dr. Leon Anijar, who is a specialist in the treatment of back pain. These other issues and we're talking about all the different treatments that they do, how they do them and how they differ from surgeries and the advances that have been made in the last ten years. His website, which I got wrong the last time, is LeonAnijarMD.com, and his last name is spelled in A N I J A R MD.com. LeonAnijarMD.com. If you want to go up and learn more about what he does and how he does it and the alternatives to treatment. All right, Doctor, I'm not going to do that tongue twister again because I'm sure I'll screw it up this time. So why don't you tell us about the percutaneous, etc., etc., and what that actually means and what that treatment is like? 00;10;11;02 - 00;11;02;00 Dr Anijar Yes. So if you look back at the history of orthopedic and spine surgeries, typically it involves relatively large dissections, incisions, distractions and then instrumentation. All that means is to say that it used to take a lot of work to do large orthopedic surgery, and they still do require a lot of work. In the last five or ten years, a lot of research has been done on what can be manipulated, addressed with the least amount of distraction of the patient's underlying anatomy. And to that end, there are these new devices. One of them that you mentioned, a sacroiliac joint fusion or a pro cutaneous sacral joint fusion used to previously be done with large nails that would go through the side of the hip and then try to fuze the sacred iliac joint and the figural joint to give your viewer some context. It basically the joint that connects your tailbone to a part of your pelvis. 00;11;02;26 - 00;11;07;03 Cary So I'm just stop you. I want you go back and repeat what you just said. Large what. 00;11;07;24 - 00;11;09;13 Dr Anijar Large? Nails and screws. Yeah. 00;11;09;23 - 00;11;22;19 Cary That they're cringing in here in the studio. I just know it's not so. Yeah. Large nails and screws. Okay, so this procedure we're talking about is changes the need to do that, I'm guessing, correct. 00;11;22;19 - 00;12;10;23 Dr Anijar Yeah. So what they what they discovered is that, you know, if you want to fuze a joint you can, you can do it without a lot of hardware. You can do it by placing something called cadaver allograft, which just means a piece of bone into the joint. And then the body will naturally absorb that bone and fuze the joint, naturally. So when you go back in a few months, you take an X-ray of that joint, the joint will be gone. It'll just be one big piece of bone, and that is a permanent fusion that can be done for the patient that doesn't compromise their flexibility or mobility, that can address the pain that's coming from that joint. And that can be done with a very small incision about the size of your thumbnail in an outpatient surgery setting where the patient goes home that day, as opposed to having to stay in the hospital and do a lot of rehab. 00;12;10;27 - 00;12;28;23 Cary My God, that's amazing. I mean, that is absolutely amazing to contrast that with what the treatment was before using screws and nails versus this and is this once this is in place, is it a permanent fix or do you go back ten years later or how how does all that work, Doctor? 00;12;29;03 - 00;12;44;11 Dr Anijar No, it's permanent, meaning that a patient lives with it for the rest of their life. They die with it. They they don't need to have it removed or revised The nice thing about it, as well as let's say there's a complication that arises in the context of the old way of doing things where you would place with rods and screws. 00;12;44;27 - 00;13;05;22 Dr Anijar Excuse me, let's say that patient got infected. In order to address that infection, you have to remove all that hardware, give the patient long term antibiotic, and then deal with the consequences of deconstructing that patient's pelvis. In this scenario, if the patient has a small infection, it's just treated with over-the-counter antibiotics that are not over the counter over-the-counter, but with prescription antibiotics. 00;13;05;24 - 00;13;13;17 Dr Anijar Right. And their infection resolves, there’s nothing is to be removed. So it doesn't require the risk profile. The procedure is very tolerable. 00;13;14;04 - 00;13;30;28 Cary That is absolutely remarkable. So so to summarize it, basically, you're not using any of this hardware and putting this hardware in in a person's body to solve the problem, that the risk of infection or reinfection after the surgery drops to, what, 10%, if that. 00;13;31;04 - 00;13;32;16 Dr Anijar Oh, less than 1%. 00;13;32;21 - 00;13;42;07 Cary Oh, my. That is absolutely remarkable. And it's it's it's a same day procedure and you're out of the hospital on the same day outpatient. Yeah. 00;13;42;07 - 00;13;46;25 Dr Anijar It's not even done in the hospital. It's done in a surgery center, typically, which is like an ambulatory operating room. 00;13;47;13 - 00;13;50;27 Cary That is absolutely remarkable. How long is that treatment been available? 00;13;51;28 - 00;15;02;17 Dr Anijar I mean, I don't know the exact the exact year that the surgery became an option, but I do know that it gained a lot of momentum in the last two years, in large part because when it first came out, it was predominantly marketed towards orthopedic surgeons and spine surgeons and, you know, just like any field, like any industry, there's always a reluctance to adopt new technologies and it just didn't gain much traction. And then when that occurred, a lot of interventional pain and spine guys were like, Well, you know, I'm pretty good with doing these types of procedures. You know, I know how to, you know, to access a joint. Let me see if I can if I can provide value to my patients with it. And they did. And they ran with it at the best comparison to make to what's going on now is looking at what cardiologists and cardiac surgeons went through. And it used to be if you go back to the eighties, if you had a coronary artery disease, you went to a cardiologist, they gave you some medication. But then after that, you needed open heart surgery, you had to get coronary artery bypass. Right? Right. Did a large, large procedure. Right now, if you have coronary disease, you go to a cardiologist and they do a stint Then typically either through your wrist or through your groin and you're out of the hospital that day or the following day without having your chest cracked. And that's very similar to what's going on now with orthopedic spine surgery, interventional pain and spine. 00;15;03;09 - 00;15;29;10 Cary That is absolutely remarkable that that that that's a great analogy. The way you compared the to that is quite remarkable absolutely remarkable. The advances that have gone on now, you know, in treating these spine and back issues just seem to be this surprising, very, very surprising for us to hear all of this and how different is from what it used to be. 00;15;30;15 - 00;15;47;02 Dr Anijar Yeah, no. And you know something? I just want to also leave your viewers what to remember that, you know, just because back surgery is scary, that doesn't mean that it's not indicated what probably happened back and what probably happened, you know, in the last in the last decade or so that it was being over utilized because there weren't other options available. 00;15;47;02 - 00;16;08;26 Dr Anijar Right. You only had a few injections. You could do a few medications. You could take the surgeon and only had so many surgeries they could offer you. Now that you have more than an injection, but less than a big surgery, you have a whole other cohort of patients that you can treat effectively without subjecting them to repeat injections or to a large, complicated surgery. And that's kind of where interventional pain and spine fit them. 00;16;08;28 - 00;16;34;02 Cary Yeah. And what's interesting about that is I'm sure that has an effect on the success ratio that surgeons are having because they're not using, you know, as you said, three or four procedures for everybody that that don't necessarily work for everybody. Now you've got a host of different interventions you can do, and they are significantly different, especially, you know, when you're talking about these mentally minimally invasive surgical procedures and the recovery time of the infection time. 00;16;34;02 - 00;19;04;08 Cary It's really quite remarkable. When we come back from the break, we're going to continue this fascinating conversation with Dr. Leon and Anijar I hope you're learning from this today, because the purpose of doing these kind of shows is to expose you to information you typically would not get. I've been doing radio for 16 years and on medical topics and this is something I have never heard of. So believe me, I think this is a very helpful to all of you out there to be hearing this. If you want to learn more, go to the website. LeonAnijarMD.com. That's spelled A N I J A R and A N I, I keep getting thank you. I keep getting this wrong A N I J A R. LeonAnijarMD.com is the website. If you want more, go up there. If you want more information, you can get a lot of information from from the website. We'll be right back after the break. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate. Broadcasting here on the HIA radio network. Coast to coast across the U.S., we've got more of the doctors in the house. Stay Tuned. ♪ ♪ Welcome back. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate Show broadcasting coast to coast across USA here on the HIA radio network. You can find out more about us by going to the website HealthRadio.us. My producer, Ms. Alethea Cox. I'm your host, Cary Hall you're hearing this. Maybe you've got somebody in your family suffering from this problem or you've got a friend or somebody you go to church with, whatever the case may be. This go to the podcast platform. You don't have to try to regurgitate all this. This is like drinking from a fire hose. Listening to Dr. Anijar And he's got so much information here. Go up to the podcast platforms, SoundCloud, iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, there, the show's post on on all those platforms. And you can tell somebody to listen to it and they can benefit from this. That's the best way to do this if you want to pass that information along to somebody else, doctor. Anijar’s website is LeonAnijarMD.com, LeonAnijarMD.com is the website. All this information is up there. If you want to reach out to him or connect with him, you can do that on the website. So, Doctor, let's move on and talk about invasive lumbar decompression and Inter Spinosis Spacer Devices. Can you talk a little bit about those and how those are used? And and what are the effects and how do they function? 00;19;04;08 - 00;20;16;18 Dr Anijar Doctor Yeah, so, you know, a very common problem that affect people as they age is significant back pain and like weakness. There are multiple causes of that, but a very common cause. United States is narrowing of the spine and the subsequent pressure that place on the nerves that control your leg, that narrowing of the spine is called central canal stenosis. All that means that the nerves have less space, have less space to move and breathe. And as a result, you get weakening of your thigh muscles, you get increased lethargy or fatigue when you walk long distances and you kind of feel this kind of like aching sensation in your legs. That's why as we age, we tend to lean forward a little bit more. We tend to adopt a hunched over appearance, and that's in large part because our body is naturally trying to open up that space. And we lean forward. We open up that space slightly. And then you also note that people are they age, they kind of know where all the benches are. They know where all the seats are in a particular area. And they know that, okay, if I walk this far, I have to make sure there's a seat waiting for me. And one of the ways that that was previously addressed is with something called a decompression fusion, where you would remove the bones of the back that were placing pressure on the spine and infuse those bones to keep them in place. 00;20;16;18 - 00;21;10;06 Dr Anijar Because once you remove the bone, you're destabilizing the spine. So you have to stabilize it with external hardware and that that's a great option for patients that have severe central canal stenosis. But the vast majority of people don't have severe central consciousness, as the vast majority of people have mild, moderate, you know. So that means people that can walk several blocks, maybe even a few miles before their legs get weak, but don't qualify for a more advanced procedure that would involve a significant amount of surgical dissection for those patients. Mild to moderate, there were only really two options. It was either physical therapy and rehab or some kind of an injection, because most surgeons, if they recommend them a surgery, they probably didn't do well for those surgery or the too much for them. Or they would say they're just not good candidates for surgery. So as a result, a lot of research was done on how to treat patients with mild, moderate stenosis and they developed these minimally invasive inner spinal spacer devices. 00;21;10;15 - 00;21;54;00 Dr Anijar All it is, is a little mini cardiac. It looks almost like a like a like two arms lifting things in opposite directions. They go in between the bones of your back and literally crank, crank, crank them open slightly so that the nerves have a little bit more space to breathe. And what that does is that it provides the patient with enough decompression, enough relief that they can now walk longer distances, they can feel less fatigue in their leg, they have less ache in their leg. And, you know, for a lot of patients, this is really an excellent option as a bridge between some kind of an injection versus some kind of big surgery because of the injections aren't working and the patient doesn't want to try surgery. This is something that could really give them a lot of good relief. 00;21;54;04 - 00;22;02;26 Cary That is remarkable. When this is surgically inserted, how big is the incision and the procedure is it like outpatient, like the other ones, correct? 00;22;02;26 - 00;22;11;18 Dr Anijar Yeah, it's an outpatient procedure. You go home the same day. The incision is small. I would say it's probably no larger than the cap of a pen. Maybe an inch or two, if that. 00;22;11;23 - 00;22;19;07 Cary That's amazing. And the device, once that's in place to stay forever, do you go back if you need to replace it or how does all that work? 00;22;19;08 - 00;23;02;00 Dr Anijar It can stay forever. Usually one of two things will happen. Either patient will do excellent right and they won't have any need to revise, or their disease will continue to progress and they need to come back, have an additional device placed or they'll, you know, get into an accident or their disease is significantly worse than they go to have a formal spine surgery. Now, the nice thing about this option for patients is that there's no there are no screws implanted, there's no bone removed, there's no drilling that occurs. If this needs to be removed, it's a very simple procedure to remove it, whereas if you get a lumbar fusion, the process of removing a lumbar fusion is oftentimes more extensive than the process of implanting a lumbar fusion. So for this, if a patient needs something more done later in life, it's very easily reversible. 00;23;02;03 - 00;23;21;04 Cary What a remarkable. That's absolutely remarkable. I mean, want to look at that versus a spinal fusion, the risk, the infection, the you know, the recovery time, you know, the pain management after you go through this versus what you're talking about is like night and day. At least that's what it sounds like. Doctor. 00;23;21;10 - 00;24;21;00 Dr Anijar Yeah, I mean, it's important to remember that the, the, the way that physicians think impacts the treatment that they offer. And I think it's important for patients to understand that perspective when they're meeting with a physician. Now, there are big surgeries that are indicated for for patients with big problems, right. But that doesn't mean that that's the only option available to you. So when you're meeting with a surgeon, when you're meeting with an interventional pain physician, you should remember that they're going to they're going to provide you with a recommendation that's within their wheelhouse. So if you only go to a spine surgeon that only does complex spine surgery and it doesn't work with a pain physician or doesn't know any pain physician, he's either going to offer you nothing or offer you a big spine surgery. If you go to a pain physician that doesn't do these procedures or doesn't work with a spine surgeon or whatever the doctor does this procedure, they're going to offer you an injection or medication or nothing. So you have to go to somebody that is aware of them, that is aware of these is aware of these options. That works with people that know how to do these options and knows how to guide you appropriately, I think is the best line. 00;24;21;17 - 00;25;12;04 Cary Yeah, it's fascinating because it just makes me think back to a number of years ago and it was quite a few years ago, my wife was having some significant back issues and we went to see a surgeon and he had her walk down the hallway and he watched her walked in the hallway. He came back, said, okay, we're going to have to do surgery. And I've looked at it and I'm like, Seriously? She walked down a hallway and back and you watch her. Now you're going to tell us you recommend surgery. I promptly left his office and that never happened. She started doing yoga and Pilates and basically solved her own problem by doing aggressive yoga and Pilates. And she's been doing it now for the last 12, 13, 14 years. But it's fascinating to me to hear you talk about this, that you a lot of this depends on who you go see. And so my natural conclusion to this is if you if you go see a surgeon, that's the first thing they say to you. It might behoove you to get a second opinion. Am I right or wrong? 00;25;13;06 - 00;26;08;07 Dr Anijar Yeah. I mean, I think there is no greater advocate for your health care than you or your loved ones. Right. So if you're if you're caring of, as I'm sure a lot of your listeners are, caring for their elderly family or for a loved one that has these problems, you know, that person is going to be the best advocate for that patient's health care. So the same way you look at multiple houses before you buy a house and you look at you try you test drive multiple cars before you buy a car. And I don't know any physician worth his salt. That is going to take any issue with you getting a second opinion. Most of the time. What I'll say is, please do. Here's a list of people that I recommend or, you know, you're welcome to go to anybody else that you like that that's my approach. I never have any problem with a patient getting a second, third or fourth opinion. And I encourage that because I know that the recommendation that I give my patient the same recommendation I would give my own family. So I'm one to stand by those recommendations. And I'm very confident you go to a reputable physician, they'll recommend same or similar treatments for you. 00;26;08;18 - 00;27;11;07 Cary That's that I think that's really sound advice. It's good advice for our listeners to know that, you know, if you are skeptical, if even if you're, you know, if you have a concern about do I want to go through this, you know, or do I want to go on meds that are going to be an issue if I start taking you know, I start taking, you know, pain medication and, you know, it becomes addictive or another issue, you know, you need to think about this. People listen to what the doctor just said. Okay, that you are your own best advocate. I've always believed that. Okay, for myself and for my family. And I think Doctor just made that extremely clear to everybody that, you know, your fate to a large degree lies in your hands and you have to be your own advocate. That means sometimes you have to think a little bit out of the box and say, you know, do I when I look at all of this, is this something I really want to do or there's some other options out there that might make more sense for me. And I think that's what we're hearing today. And this is a remarkably good information, Doctor. It really is. 00;27;11;21 - 00;27;51;19 Dr Anijar You know, I mean, just to give you a personal story, I mean, my mom needed open heart surgery. And, you know, I took her to four or five different cardiothoracic surgeons all over the state of Florida, not because I didn't trust the first surgeon I met with, but because I wanted to have confidence that when I told my mom, yeah, mom, you really do need this type of surgery that I was I was speaking to her with full confidence. But I said, you know, not just me, not just the surgeon, not just bad surgeon, but every surgeon we've spoken with says this is a good option for you. And then when you ever you decide to go forward with it and she eventually did with the surgeon that she felt comfortable with that, you know, you're going into it knowing that you've done all your homework and that your your your, your yeah. 00;27;51;19 - 00;28;34;20 Cary You're you're comfortable and you're confident. That's what you that you've made a good decision. And that's exactly what we're telling folks today. Folks, we come back in a break. We're going to continue this fascinating conversation with Dr. Lee on anniversary. His website is LeonAnijarMD.com. He spells that A N I J A R, LeonAnijarMD.com, we come back from the break. We're going to talk about regenerative medicine and how the doctor uses that and how that affects his practice. Stay tuned. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate Show broadcasting here on the HIA radio network coast to coast across the U.S.A. We'll be back with the doctor with more. ♪ ♪ 00;28;40;12 - 00;29;02;04 Cary Welcome back. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate Show Broadcasting Coast to coast across USA here on the HIA Radio Network. You can find out more about us by going to our website HealthRadio.us, HealthRadio.us, my producer, Miss Alicia Cox. I'm your host, Cary Hall, joining us by phone from Miami, Florida. Doctor Leon Anijar, his website, if you want. 00;29;02;11 - 00;30;03;16 Cary You're listening to this, right? This is an amazing amount of information with a lot of things I'm sure 99% of you out there have never heard of. Okay. His website is LeonAnijarMD.com. You spell his last name. A N I J A R. Anijar. LeonAnijarMD.com. It would be very smart for you to take a look at this website. If you're if you're experiencing this or you're or somebody in your family is experiencing or a friend is experiencing, you heard the doctor say you have to be your own advocate. And I'm telling you that you need to if you're if you're dealing with these issues, that maybe you've had surgery and it's not working or whatever the case may be. This is an alternative. You should definitely consider and take a look at. And by the way, I asked Dr. off air 90% of what he does is covered by health insurance. So your health insurance will cover 90% of the procedures that doctor does. So. So, Doctor, let's talk a little bit about regenerative medicine here and then and then or actually, before we do that, why don't you tell that story about your father that you just told us off air here? 00;30;04;19 - 00;31;20;05 Dr Anijar Oh, yeah. So about 15 years ago, my dad was standing on front of his store and a kid on a bicycle rode into his knee, and he need. Yeah, he broke the bone and he broke his tibia, which is the weight bearing part of your of your knee. And needed surgery. So he needed a screw placed in the bone to help secure everything. He was doing great, you know, had no problems with it afterwards is a great surgeon operated on him but then a few about a year ago he started getting really significant knee pain. So he went back to the surgeon. The surgeon said, look, I don't know what's causing it, but it's probably the screw. We can remove the screw and I'll fix your problem. My dad did not want to have a surgery. He is very averse to surgery. He didn't want to have that surgery originally, but I talked him into it and I said, okay, if you don't have the surgery, why don't we just deal with the pain? And if you're having pain from the nerves of your knee, but none of those nerves, then if you do well with that, we can go back and freeze the nerves in your knee and you don't affect your motor function. They don't affect your ability to feel your knee. They solely address the pain associated with with your knee. I did that for him and I spoke to him about two days ago. And he's, you know, back to sprinting and running and doing the very active guy, doing everything he's done previously with almost 90% pain relief So he's doing very, very well with it. 00;31;20;09 - 00;31;21;14 Cary That that's remarkable. 00;31;21;18 - 00;31;31;01 Dr Anijar And my dad is nobody special, believe me. I mean, it's not like he's he's a health guru or anything. He's a regular guy that works a hard job and he just has you got you got a knee injury just like anybody else. 00;31;31;09 - 00;31;39;16 Cary That's that that's that's remarkable. I mean, really, it is. When you say freeze it, do you actually freeze it? What is it? What is what is it? 00;31;39;16 - 00;31;51;05 Dr Anijar It's called an ablation. I just say freeze it. It's easy for most people to understand that. But we essentially stun the nerve. Okay. So that it's no longer able to transmit pain signals to your brain. 00;31;51;25 - 00;32;00;15 Cary That's remarkable. And you're not taken medication. You didn't have to have the others. You don't have to have the other surgery yet. You solved the problem. That's that's pretty. 00;32;00;15 - 00;32;10;17 Dr Anijar Rare. And we do that we do that procedure in the office. I think I gave him I just like one one Xanax just to relax for the procedure. But that was about it. And we did it all in the office. 00;32;10;18 - 00;32;18;05 Cary That's that's absolutely remarkable. Talk a little bit about regenerative medicine or what you're doing there and how how you're using that in your practice. 00;32;18;05 - 00;33;48;06 Dr Anijar Dr. Yeah. So we're general medicine's a really interesting field. It's a really interesting sort of subset within our field. Basically, there are many injuries that people suffer that don't require much intervention or don't respond to much intervention is probably a better way to put it. You know, they do physical therapy, they do scratching, etc., but they don't get better. And then there's a lot of injuries that happen and patients, you know, undergo the large treatment for it. They have a big surgery or they no have any injections. And then about 80% of their symptoms have improved, but they still have residual deficits or pain. Now, the situation that those types of patients are in is, you know, they don't want to escalate their care. They don't want to do more surgery, but they don't want to do nothing. So what are the options available to them? And for soft tissue injuries, they really don't have many other options, with the exception of some regenerative treatments. Now, the regenerative option is really for patients that I would I would argue and some companies will disagree with me on this, but I would say patients with relatively minor injuries that don't that aren't indicated for which big surgery are not indicated, because if you have a big tendon tear or you have a huge effusion or a large meniscal injury, you should probably get evaluated by a surgeon first. Okay. Once they say that no surgery, not a good option for you and you still have this pain or you saw the deficit, we can consider injecting you with different therapies that can help restore the underlying anatomy that was injured prior to the accident. 00;33;49;06 - 00;33;50;28 Cary That that that's remarkable. 00;33;51;15 - 00;34;40;29 Dr Anijar And there's a whole host of options that is, you know, very common, one that I'm sure most if you watch ESPN more than 10 minutes, you're going to hear them talk about platelet rich plasma. I think Tiger would have had injected into his neck. Peyton Manning had injected pretty much every athlete under the sun. I mean, Joe Rogan talked about all the time they get platelet rich plasma injections into their arthritic joints, into their back and their neck everywhere. You have a bone marrow derived stem cell injection, you have amniotic fluid injection. You have a whole host of different treatments available for you. The important thing is to go to a physician that knows when to and when to not escalate care for you. You don't want to go to, in my opinion, a physician that says they can fix everything with regenerative medicine. But you also don't want to go to a physician who says that's just hooey That's not a good option for you. You need to have surgery. So it's you got it. You got to find somebody who knows a little bit of both. 00;34;41;07 - 00;34;58;02 Cary That's amazing. So and these procedures you mentioned, know, some of the some of the athletes that have had these done, are you go back and get them every year or two years. I mean, how does that how does how long does it last basis? 00;34;58;04 - 00;35;17;08 Dr Anijar Yeah, it's on a case by case. It depend on the injury. It depends on the patient. It depends on what their expectations are quite. Honestly, you know, if a patient gets an injection, let's say I did one patient, he has significant lumbar fusion. That just means he had arthritis in his lumbar joint. I do these injections for him and he does 80% better, but he wants 100%. 00;35;17;08 - 00;35;35;02 Dr Anijar So for him, you know, 80%, not enough. He wants to come out and get repeat injections. And, you know, I'm happy to do them for him because those are his expectations. I have another patient that got 20% better and they are over the moon. They're like, I never thought I could feel this much better. And for them, they don't want to have another injection because they're fine with where they're at. But it's all a matter of patient expectation. 00;35;35;03 - 00;36;16;06 Cary Yeah, this is all been past. Thank you so much for your time today. I think this I'd love to do some more of this. I'm sure there's a lot more that we could talk about. You know, my takeaway from this people is this a size 44 overcoat doesn't fit everybody. You know, you need to be willing to look. As you heard, Doctor, you need to be your own advocate. His website is LeonAnijarMD.com and that's A N I J A R. LeonAnijarMD.com. If you want information most of what he does is covered by insurance, 90% of it. And I would strongly suggest you take a look at this. If you're looking for options and alternatives and now, ladies and gentlemen, I leave you with this thought from Dr. Martin Luther King. 00;36;16;16 - 00;36;44;07 Cary Americans must learn to live together as brothers and sisters, or we will surely perish together as fools. Truer words were never spoken in our time today. Thank you for listening to America's Healthcare Advocate. Broadcasting here on the HIA radio network. Coast to coast across the USA. Goodbye, America. Thank you for listening. ♪ ♪ ♪