Dr Stephen I. Ryu, MD

READ THIS BEFORE YOU MAKE A DECISION. I’m 45 years old and suffered greatly at the hands of Dr. Ryu. This won’t be a sour grapes review from someone who didn’t recover. This is from someone nearly paralyzed by his apathy and arrogance but later helped by a careful Dr. I like many of you suffered with pain from a bulged disc in my neck and went through all of the steps to avoid surgery. I decided to meet with Dr. Ryu, a 600 mile trip for me, as he is known for the MOBI- C branded total disc replacement. Based on his Standford affiliation, I visited him twice and authorized the surgery. My recovery was far from as promised, but ok, I tried to understand. I slowly got a little better until 6 months following my surgery when I was met with immediate level 10 debilitating pain in my neck, and now, both arms and hands. No more chopsticks- my signature was hard to write. I called and called Dr. Ryu with no return call. (He said to “call him anytime”) Desperate, I went to a… local Dr. who ordered a CAT scan and MRI. Alarmed, he said to immediately reach out to Dr. Ryu, I’ll show and tell you why he was so alarmed below. After 5 weeks I received a call from Dr. Ryu who said “I really don’t see anything, but get a shot in your c5c6 space(my surgery level) to confirm pain is coming from that nerve. “ I did, and the pain reduced right away but came back after about month. This time, it took 4 weeks to get Dr. Ryu on the phone. A total of 13-14 weeks for this interaction. After informing Dr. Ryu the shot he requested confirmed pain at the surgery level he repeated what he said the first time that he “couldn’t really see anything conclusive, but maybe he could go through the back of my neck, near my spinal cord, to relieve the pressure.” He said he wasn’t that “exuberant” about this procedure. Clearly, I’m on my own at this point and by now my family’s life has been seriously altered too. I couldn’t wash dishes without being in tears. I’m 6 ft 240lbs, it was humiliating, and had all but given up- What do you do when a Stanford Dr. says you’re not getting better??? Below is a picture of the MRI showing the MOBI C disc Dr. Ryu had improperly implanted. The dark oval is the MOBI C disc. Even the untrained eye can see its compressing the spinal cord. How Dr. Ryu can say there isn’t anything conclusive is ridiculous and laughable at best. THIS is why my local Dr. was so adamant about resolving this quickly. Luckily, I found a Dr. that would take my case who removed the implant and did a proper fusion. I feel fine now! But here’s what you need to know: The MOBI C implant, which, in person, is actually cheap and underwhelming looking, was not put in correctly. Specifically, Dr. Ryu did not remove all of the original disc material and the implant did not have any chance of fusing to the bone- hence why it slid into my spinal cord. The MOBI- C disc uses small teeth that to hook to bone not disc type material. There's no other fastening mechanism. I will NEVER ever forget the look on the 2nd Dr’s face when he saw the MRI. He said, “you’re getting surgery tomorrow morning.” He said just a small accident would leave you paralyzed from the neck down. I have surgery pictures proving everything. You’ll have to decide what is best for you and your family. Do not be swayed by the Stanford affiliations and stay away from trick of the week products for your spine. Above all, I can understand a mistake, I can try to understand negligence, but I can not understand how he could just throw me and my family away when all he had to do was revise his surgery-even after we confirmed the problem at his behest. His ego was more important than me continuing to suffer or the high likelihood of me being a quadrapalegic. I don’t want anyone else to go through this and I was lucky. Good luck in your journey.

He did a microdiscectomy on L5 S1 more than two years ago, and it's doing great. He was extremely open, candid, and helpful at deciding how to proceed. Very personable and extremely knowledgable and spent a lot of time answering all of my questions. He really knows his stuff and has done about 1000 of this kind of operations. I am so glad I chose him! He operates out of Stanford which is another plus, which is also where he trained. I can not recommend him more highly!

outstanding Doctor.