Regional Spine Center

Dr. Carver	Dr. Halamandaris	Dr. Kaczmar	Dr. Wong

Enjoy freedom of movement.

According to estimates, 18.4 million Americans have some form of spine impairment and 80 percent experience back pain during their lifetime. Pain can be mild or completely disabling, sudden or chronic. The causes are varied—stress, muscle trauma, injury, congenital, degenerative and circulatory disorders, infections, inflammatory disease, vertebral compression fractures due to osteoporosis, tumors and about 30 other causes. The pain can be centered in bones, discs, muscles, ligaments, tendons and other tissues that make up and support the spine.

Today, people who live in the Central Coast region have a local resource for the most advanced diagnostics and treatments available so they can stay close to home, work, family and friends. Our Regional Spine Center offers a comprehensive and integrated program of care that begins with prevention and education and includes a variety of treatment options from medication and physical therapy to surgical procedures.

The Spine Center team features neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons who trained at some of the country’s most prestigious universities and medical centers such as Yale, Harvard and Princeton. All are board-certified, continue to pursue additional training to stay ahead of advancing surgical techniques and technologies and perform hundreds of procedures each year. Our interdisciplinary, seamless approach brings surgeons, radiologists and other physicians, nurses certified in orthopedics by the National Association of Orthopedic Nurses, physical and occupational therapists, pain management professionals and case managers together to care for our patients.

Case managers assist patients, their family and their doctor in making arrangements for care after leaving the hospital. Most patients will receive in-home or outpatient physical therapy for one to two weeks through Central Coast Visiting Nurse Association, an integral member of the Spine Center team.

The Regional Spine Center features nine large home-like rooms in a dedicated wing of the hospital. Each specially-designed room features comfortable furniture for visitors and a flat-panel television for viewing patient education and on-demand programming.

Customized operating suites are equipped with advanced technologies that enable minimally-invasive techniques, microsurgery and computer aided surgery (CAS) technologies. Video cameras, imaging technologies such as MRI, CT, ultrasound and x-ray, computer-assisted navigation, specially designed instruments and precise diagnostic tools provide alternatives to conventional open spine surgery that may minimize patient recovery time, pain, and scarring.  We also offer procedures such as kyphoplasty, vertebroplasty and other non-surgical techniques to treat people with vertebral compression fractures. These procedures, similar to techniques used in cardiac catheterization, are performed by physicians who specialize in interventional radiology, orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery.

During a pre-surgery orientation, patients learn what to expect, pre-surgery exercises, how to prepare themselves and their home for after the surgery and get answers to their questions.