HILLSDALE, Mich. (WILX) – Hillsdale Hospital is helping patients with spinal issues through a surgery that is new to the rural hospital.
The procedure is called a lumbar total disc replacement and helps patients overcome lower back pain. The surgery was performed at Hillsdale Hospital for the first time in December.
Megan Taylor was the first patient to receive the surgery from Hillsdale Hospital. Taylor said she has been having back pain on and off for 15 years, and that pain got to the point where she couldn’t do anything on her own, especially lifting things off the ground.
“I went, you know, 15 years with back pain just to wake up with nothing. Like, I thought something went wrong at first. And they were like, yeah, you probably will start feeling it in a couple of hours, you know? And then I never did. And I was shocked,” Taylor said.
Taylor said this was not her first attempt to relieve the pain, but when she woke up from this surgery, she didn’t have any pain for the first time in 15 years.
The procedure involves removing a damaged disc from between bones in the lower back and replacing it with an artificial device that allows the spine to move normally.
Compared to other surgeries, such as lumbar fusion, it reduces the chance that patients will need another surgery from 28% to 8%.
It’s been a few weeks since Taylor’s surgery, and she is back at work and doing things on her own now. She said it feels great not having lower back pain anymore.
Dr. Amritraj Loganathan, the neurosurgeon who performed the procedure, said this has been an exciting opportunity.
“What we want to do here at Hillsdale Hospital is provide services that maybe aren’t being provided in other places in terms of spine care,” Loganathan said. “What that does is hopefully make us a leader in this field and using this technology that will attract people from our surrounding areas to come in and see us.”
In 2023, over 24 percent of adults reported having back pain, with over 8% of adults reporting chronic back pain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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date: 2026-02-10 22:58:00