Has anyone heard of rib excision in the UK? I know they do it abroad but wasn't sure if it was done here? My mum has been diagnosed with 12th rib syndrome or slipping rib syndrome and none of the injections she has had helped at all. This surgery apparently can help but her consultant said he wouldn't do it. If there is a chance it could help her then I want to explore it!! She has gone from being fully healthy and fit to being unable to walk and in pain 24/7 OVERNIGHT!!!!! She now relies on a cocktail of strong painkillers including morphine and also now anti-depression meds. Thanks all!
The first recorded instance of this was a long time ago when some guy called "God" did it to some dude named "Adam" --- and started off a whole world of trouble! 😈
Seriously, Amy , your Mum is not being treated right and should be able to get relief somehow, somewhere.
Hopefully you can get a surgeon do do this- it should be a simple enough procesure.
If you contact a university hospital , maybe theycan point you in the right direction.
Haha! Thanks for your message Madlegs1. So little is known about this condition-l it would seem. None of the GP’s that are prescribing her medication know about it so rather than trying to get to the root of it, they are simply giving her more and more drugs. She doesn’t sleep because of the pain. She cannot walk further than a few meters at a time. She can no longer go to work or drive. She has to use a wheelchair to leave the house. It’s been like this for 4 years now and it cannot continue the way it is. My mum is 54 and is no longer living- simply existing.
I thought I had read all of the journals out theee regarding this condition but hadn’t come across resectioning the rib?? Definitely worth investigating further. Now, how would I go about contacting them?? Would it be the people that wrote the article or the website?? Not sure?!! Thanks for your help so far. You are making me feel much less alone on my quest!! It gets difficult when everyone else seems to be accepting the situation!! Xx
The article above on Slipping rib syndrome is written by some surgeons in The Netherlands, and I believe you are in the UK? You could email them to ask if they know of a surgeon in the UK that is familiar with this. Surgeons go to conferences and review each other's journal articles so they may well know of someone in the UK that would do it.
You could also take that article and show it to your GP and ask if they would find someone.
Did the surgeon say why they wouldn't do it? Sometimes if a surgeon refuses to do a surgery, it isn't because they don't think it should be done but because they are not trained or experienced in doing that surgery.
Thanks for your message!!! Because the pain is supposed to be linked to a trapped nerve in the rib, the surgeon said they wouldn’t remove the rib because it would sever the nerve at the spine which would just move the pain. I’m just sure there is something else out there that could help!!!
Yes she had those and they didn’t work. The only thing that did work was before they did the injections you mentioned, they used a anaesthetic injection to make sure it was the right area and that totally got rid of the pain for about 24 hours until it wore off and the pain came back.
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