Intro

I was badly injured at Neck and Back Medical Center in Laguna Hills at the beginning of 2012. It's now the spring of 2014 and I am still recovering. Thus, if you are evaluating neck and back pain treatment options in Orange County and considering the Neck and Back Medical Center in Laguna Hills, you've come to the right place. My name is Vlad V. I do not state my full name because of the other web presence I have. This site is my attempt to shed light on spinal decompression and rehabilitation exercises that constitute this facility's "protocol" as well as on their staff of "spinal rehabilitation experts". All I want to do is to share my experience with other chronic low back pain sufferers who are seeking treatment. Also available is the post-injury letter I sent to Cory Gould, the medical director of the center. The letter contains complete recount of my experience. I hope this site will help you avoid mistakes I made. If you have further questions, you can email me. Good luck and thanks for visiting.

"Safe" Treatment Leads to a Serious Injury

I ran, skied and surfed before visiting the Neck and Back Medical Center in Laguna Hills. I dealt with low back pain most of my life. The pain and functional limitation in leaning forward became chronic in 2011, which prompted me to seek treatment. Earlier that year I was injured through chiropractic manipulation in San Clemente. The injury caused shooting pain down my right leg. I went to the Neck and Back Medical Center to obtain a correct diagnosis for the injury and have it rehabilitated. My wife picked their phone off a relative who apparently had good results there (turned out to be a misunderstanding). The center advertises on SoCal COX cable using false claims that their equipment is "FDA-cleared" and that the treatment is covered by insurance. It also advertises "free evaluation" which is no more than a gimmick to procure a new prospect. I was evaluated by Dr. Robert Sklar, thinking that I am being seen by an old and experienced orthopedic surgeon. In fact, as I later found out, Dr. Robert Sklar is a retired gynecologist from Michigan. He called himself an expert and assured me that the treatment worked for him personally. I was not asked to sign an informed consent which, along with their TV advertisement, led me to believe that the treatment is safe. I was up for a rude awakening.

Following the prescribed treatment on DRX-9000 decompression table and MedEx exercise equipment, I have developed a chronic sacroiliac sprain (essentially the sprain of ligaments that connect vertebral column to pelvis). I did complain of new pains to their "therapists" but I was assured that this is normal and 30-40% of patients experience such pains. I had to discontinue treatment after 6 sessions because I felt that something was seriously wrong. Over the next 2 weeks I developed classic symptoms of sacroiliac sprain, which is truly a gruesome injury.

For a period of 6 months following the injury on DRX-9000, I felt clicks in my pelvis, could not keep any position for more than 5 minutes and could not sleep without medication. The pain was severe and constant. I felt like the top part of my body was not well connected to the bottom part. I suffered profuse night sweats. My life was hell and, coincidentally, my son was born at that time, making it extremely hard to bear. I literally could not do anything but lay down and switch positions every 5 minutes or so. I never been on medication in my life but I had to get on anti-depressants to be able to maintain.

Recovery

Over a period of time, I undergone a number of low back prolotherapy treatments (injections of irritants into ligaments to re-grow and strengthen the tissues) which greatly helped me to get better. However, most of athletic activities I previously enjoyed are permanently off-limits. I cannot run and I certainly cannot jump. I can only sleep on the left side now. Back, front and right-side sleeping cause excessive pain. Ironically, while treating the injury, I learned that my low back condition was not the result of degenerated disk but some loss of the spinal curve, correctable by simple and methodical exercise.

It escapes me how the staff of self-proclaimed "spinal rehabilitation experts" fails to diagnose the loss of the spinal curve and instead prescribes exercises leading to further loss of the curve, increasing pain and a terrible injury to otherwise healthy sacroiliac joint. I view such attitude as immoral.

The overall recovery cost me close to $20,000 in out-of pocket expenses.

Research

I did my homework only after the injury, to find out what exactly happened and why.

Neck and Back Medical Center uses DRX-9000 decompression table. This equipment is NOT FDA-approved. There is no FDA "Label" or "Product Insert" available for the equipment, which is a mandatory piece of documentation. Here is an excellent article from Quack Watch that sums up the history and shady marketing practices for decompression devices: Be Wary of Spinal Decompression Therapy with VAX-D or Similar Devices. Essentially, only the belt for the VAX-D decompression device was ever officially approved by the FDA.

Neck and Back Medical Center uses MedEx exercise equipment. The equipment is not FDA-approved. As I learned from a few of the doctors that treated me post-injury, MedEx is a marketing gimmik that does not provide any more benefit than a Roman Chair. It does isolate certain muscles but it also isolates the heavy load on your lumbar and sacroiliac ligaments for prolonged time, weakening them and making them succeptable to injury.

The decompression treatment is not safe. From my research, injuries on DRX-9000 are commonplace. The common injury is vertebral disk tear or complete rupture of the disk requiring emergency fusion surgery. The practitioner who treated me post-injury sometimes sees a few people a week who get their disks torn on decompression tables. While a torn disk can be diagnosed on MRI, a ligament sprain in the low back cannot be, which limited my legal recourse to nothing.

PDF of an excellent article by two MDs: Motorized Lumbar Traction Devices - What's the Evidence?

More on the marketing practices for decompression tables: The Truth behind Space Age Cure for Back Pain.

Contrary to what you may hear on COX and from Dr.'s Robert Sklar and Cory Gould, medical insurance does NOT cover decompression. Insurance companies are not fools. There is no evidence that the treatment helps (see above), and if something goes wrong it will literally cost the insurer tens of thousands of dollars to fix you up. How does insurance pay for it then? The Neck and Back Medical Center billed my insurer HealthNet for "manual therapy" performed by Dr. Robert Sklar - that is how!

Take a look at this revealing document about marketing practices of the Neck and Back Medical Center: a third party was hired to increase the number of referring physicians leading to increase in new patients, revenue and to a whooping 13:1 Return on Invesment. Graphs, pie charts... Well done, The Referral Specialists! The document is proudly presented under the link "one of our clients made an addtional $576K".

Finally, there is no requirement in the state of California for a person performing physical therapy or overseeing PT treatment to be a licensed PT, as long as licensed PT is present on premises. There are such alternating "sitting" PTs at Neck and Back Medical Center: Shana Maghsoodi and Heather Heffner. I saw them once at the beginning of the treatment. The rest of the time I was supervised by "therapists", who, as far as I could tell, have no relevant education and cannot answer simple questions about the treatment. I don't know about Shana, but Heather has just graduated and, in my opinion, is just as inexperienced and clueless as most young people nowadays.

Conclusion

Do you think a legitimate medical facility would have employed a retired gynecologist to diagnose people with chronic back pain? Or failed to serve an informed consent? Or employed street people to operate "medical" equipment? Of course, I did not know all that beforehand. Hindsight is always 20/20. While in treatment, I noticed shody things about the place but I thought that I'd give it a try because at the time I had seemingly exhausted other options. As you may know, with chronic pain comes depression and it colors everything black. You may switch your guard system off and try anything that has a promise of reducing the pain. But it's never a good time to do that. Not with the predatory medical system breathing down your neck.

It is my opinion that the Neck and Back Medical Center is not set up with a mission to treat low back pain but to feed on people's misfortune. There is no compassion or accountability that you will encounter there, only the desire to make you into a paying customer. I believe I clearly showed you that this facility is just a medical, insurance and referral scam.