September 11, 2020 - Today, the Croatian media has reported that the former Croatian President and the current International Olympic Committee member, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, underwent surgery on her spinal cord on Friday.
Jutarnji list reports that the surgery has been a complete success and that the Croatian ex-president will be released from hospital on Saturday. It is expected that her full recovery will take several months.
Although it's obvious that nobody wants to spend time in hospitals, especially so during an infectious disease epidemic, the former president obviously had reasons to undergo surgery. She underwent an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion with instrumentation on her C4 and C5 vertebrae.
It's a kind of surgery that releases the pressure put on the nerve roots and/or spinal cord by a herniated disc or bone fragments. The disc gets removed during the surgery through an incision made in the front of the neck, thus releasing the pressure created by a slipped disc, as they remove the pressure surface. The space between the bony vertebrae is empty after a disc is removed. To prevent the vertebrae from collapsing and rubbing together, a spacer bone graft is inserted to fill the open disc space. The graft serves as a bridge between the two vertebrae to create a spinal fusion. The bone graft and vertebrae are fixed in place with metal plates and screws.
We'd like to wish the former president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović a speedy and successful recovery!
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