When it comes to spine-related problems, neurosurgeon Dr. Michael R. Stoffman's primary objective is to get people out of pain. Pain is his target.
Sometimes his patients have pain in their legs -- due to a pinched nerve -- so serious they can't even walk. Other patients have hip pain, numbness in hands, a herniated disk.
Dr. Stoffman has taken pain removal to a new level.
What had to be done with hospital stays of several days, he now treats in many cases -- including many suffering from pinched nerves -- on an outpatient basis, with minimally invasive surgery, in which he operates on the spine through, remarkably, an 18-millimeter incision, using an intensive and expensive microscope.
The power of this quarter-million dollar microscope, and the expertise of the surgeon, allows for a much smaller incision and a far greater pinpointing of the area under surgery.
Dr. Stoffman has brought his prodigious powers and cutting edge technology to Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center. He is the hospital's chief of neurosurgery, another coup for a hospital on the cutting edge itself of so many aspects of medical treatment, as readers of the Reporter have had ample occasion to learn.
Joseph A. Ruffolo, president and CEO of Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, took time to explain to the Reporter how having a world level neurosurgeon at Memorial is for the benefit of the people here, especially those in correctable pain.
"We know how many people suffer from chronic back and neck pain," said Mr. Ruffolo. "What's really unique that Dr. Stoffman brings to the table is that he has a minimally invasive approach to back and neck surgery.
"With minimal incision, patients who used to be inpatients for three days or four days, sometimes longer, can now be treated on an outpatient basis because of the size of the incision and Dr. Stoffman's ability to work within the smallest cut."
It's a job, no doubt, and the neurosurgeon himself said he is thankful to be able to relieve people of their pain.
"The most gratifying part of this job is when people thank me and tell me that I've given them their life back," Dr. Stoffman said. "Fortunately, someone tells me that almost every day, and that just keeps me going and wanting to do more and more. To see the difference in people's lives that you -- with a team -- can create is unbelievable ... people going back to work.
"Someone told me yesterday that he hasn't slept in 10 years because the pain in his leg was so bad that every time he moved he would feel a terrible twinge. And with a 1-hour surgery, we were able to get rid of that, and now he can sleep at night and he feels better during the day. Those types of comments that we get are what drives us to do what we do."
Though long years of study and ceaselessly honing one's craft, with people with chronic and tormenting pain depending entirely on him, with all that pressure -- can one actually like this work?
"Like is an understatement. I love it," Dr. Stoffman said with a confidence borne of a man who knows how to succeed in his craft. "When you open up a spine and see the nerve all pinched and compressed and pushed the other way, you make a little incision in the covering of the disk, and this huge fragment of disk comes out, and all of a sudden the nerve is happy. It's incredibly gratifying."
Many of Dr. Stoffman's surgeries, done at Memorial, are performed in an abbreviated time that a few years ago was simply unheard of.
Patients are often home for the six o'clock news, Mr. Ruffolo said.
"They do not even sleep in the hospital for one night. They go home and sleep in their own bed," Dr. Stoffman said -- and pain free, one might add, for the first time in years.
Even more complicated surgeries requiring the installation of screws and rods to stabilize the spine require only a brief hospital stay, sometimes as little as one night.
Looking to the future, Dr. Stoffman said he hopes to be able to do those surgeries too on an outpatient basis.
So how is it done? The patient comes in with aching, draining, decades-old pain, and a few hours later, dramatically and joyfully pain is a thing of the past! What caused the change from what might be described by a layman as comparatively clumsier, less efficient surgeries still practiced at some hospitals, to one of sleek efficiency, one dedicated toward the patient's immediate pain relief?
"The technique started approximately 10 to 15 years ago, and it's become more popular over the last five to 10 years," Dr. Stoffman said. "One of the important aspects of this technique is the operating microscope. The hospital was so committed to ensuring that the neurosurgery and spine program would grow that they invested in a $250,000 piece of equipment. It lets us visualize the nerves and the tissue of the nervous system, as well as the elements of the spine incredibly well, even though we're working through an 18-millimeter incision."
Dr. Stoffman sees patients at the Summit Healthplex on Williams Road in Wheatfield and operates at Memorial. He described how he performs the surgery.
"I'm physically looking at the spine through a microscope while I'm operating, standing at the same time," Dr. Stoffman said. "I'm doing the surgery and standing and looking through the microscope, but the image that I see is magnified several times and has one of the best light sources that exist in the world, so I can see small vessels on the nerve root that are less than one millimeter. They're sub-millimeter blood vessels on the nerve root, and that is very, very important. It lets us do what we need to do through these smaller incisions."
Actually, Dr. Stoffman got introduced to the cutting edge of minimally invasive spine surgery while at Yale.
"When I was training at Yale we started doing it, back in 2001. We were doing both at that point, minimally invasive spine surgery and open spine surgery. I clearly saw the differences in how people did afterward, and the benefits of minimally invasive surgery, so I really started to focus on honing my skills at Yale to do these types of procedures."
The benefits: lower risk of complication, lower risk of infection, less postoperative pain, less blood loss and quicker recovery time.
"Like anything, it's not 100 percent, and there are many, many reasons for people to have pain," Dr. Stoffman said. "If we're able to really identify what the cause of the pain is, and then treat that, then we can make people better."
Sometimes, as Dr. Stoffman is quick to point out, patients don't require surgery, but are referred to massage therapy, a chiropractor, physical therapy, spine injections and other alternative therapies.
At Memorial, it might be argued that they have among the best of the best in this field. So much so that people from other counties have been coming to Niagara Falls to end their days of pain though the unique skills of Dr. Stoffman.
"We were fortunate in convincing Dr. Stoffman to make Niagara Falls Memorial and Western New York his home," Mr. Ruffolo said. "It was bringing a talent and competency here that didn't exist in the past."
Dr. Stoffman grew up in London, Ont., and earned his undergraduate degree in pharmacology from the University of Toronto. He got his medical degree at the University of Ottawa in 1999. He did his neurosurgery residency at Yale from 2001 to 2006, when he came on board at Memorial.
"As chief of neurosurgery at Niagara Falls Memorial, he has brought a regional perspective to our program and is drawing patients from all eight counties of Western New York to come to him and have their surgery done at our medical center," Mr. Ruffolo said.
E-mail Ron Churchill at ronchurchill@yahoo.com.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 24 2012 |