Ray Shannon has experienced a lot in his 83-plus years. ENTER DR. Hess, who had been working over the past three years to get his Minuteman G3 approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency approved the procedure in January. FOR NOW, Shannon’s biggest priority is healing.
He can add “medical pioneer” to his resume, courtesy of a unique spinal fusion surgery he underwent Monday in a Kansas City hospital.
Shannon became the first person in the United States to receive the Minuteman G3, a device inserted into his vertebrae in order to relieve chronic pain that had developed over the past several months.
His recovery has gone as expected — considerable soreness remains, primarily from the surgical procedure — and Shannon is hopeful he can soon walk without the aid of a cane or walker.
Shannon was dismissed from Blue Valley Hospital in Overland Park Tuesday, and spoke from his home Thursday about his experiences.
Acute back pain over the past several months had begun to spread, Shannon said, to the point it was sending sharp pains into his leg.
His physician, Dr. Wesley Stone, referred Shannon to Dr. Harold Hess, an Overland Park neurosurgeon who makes monthly visits to Allen County Regional Hospital.
After a battery of X-rays and other scans, Hess diagnosed Shannon with spinal stenosis, which sends pain impulses as bone rubs against bone.
“It’s just something that happens to people,” Shannon said. “It was getting hard to walk and move around. I was taking pain pills several times a day. That’s how this walker came into existence.”
Even more frightening, Shannon had fallen on occasion, his wife, Wanda recalled.
“He never broke anything, thank goodness,” she said.
The Minuteman G3 is a small, threaded device that screws directly into or between vertebrae to provide stability until bone graft material within the device encourages the bones to fuse together.
The Minuteman is unique in that unlike other spinal fusion procedures — which require lengthy incisions and extensive tissue dissection — it’s “minimally invasive.”
A small, 1-inch incision is all that’s necessary in order to insert a tube — about the size of half-inch PVC, Shannon joked — to access the spinal column.
Because surgeons do not have to cut as much tissue, recovery time is much faster.
While the procedure has been around for a couple of years in Italy, getting approval was a bit lengthier in the United States.
“I’d call him a guinea pig, but that’s probably not very appropriate,” Wanda Shannon joked.
The procedure has garnered plenty of publicity already. A Kansas City television station report made the rounds through Iola via social media outlets. Newspapers and radio accounts also have been posted.
“Dr. Hess is very excited about this,” Shannon said.
“I’m finding it hard to concentrate,” he said, which he attributes to painkillers prescribed since the surgery.
The soreness, he stressed, was from the surgery, and not the back ailment, which leaves him encouraged.
“I’m ready to be done with this walker,” Shannon said. “I’m ready to get back to work.”
Shannon is a semi-retired heating and air-conditioning vendor. He still handles administrative duties for L&M Service, which operates climate control systems out of Monarch Cement in Humboldt.
Iolan first in U.S. to undergo procedure
