CYRx MD by Dr Steven Cyr, MD

If a computer program that has never met you can outrank the surgeon who examined you, that isn't healthcare. That's a corporation practicing medicine.

A major federal lawsuit alleges that UnitedHealth used an AI algorithm called nH Predict to systematically cut off care for older Medicare Advantage patients.

Here is the most shocking part:

According to the lawsuit, 9 in 10 of those AI denials were overturned once a human actually took the time to appeal.

So why does the system keep doing it?

Because they count on the fact that almost nobody appeals.

I have watched a version of this for years, just without the software. A nurse who has never operated on a spine, or a reviewer outside the specialty, looks at a chart and overrules the surgeon who examined the patient. Now a model can do the same job faster, and most families never fight it.

While families are left in shock, navigating a complex medical system, they are handed devastating bills. In this specific case, two families had to pay $150,000 and $70,000 out of pocket just to keep their loved ones in rehab care.

A federal judge has ordered the company to turn over how this system was used.

— Dr. Steven Cyr

Has an insurance company ever denied your surgery or your post-op care? Comment below and tell me what happened.

Follow this page for real health updates and patient advocacy news that doesn't come from a corporate press release.

This is a carotid angiogram. Three views, one pair of arteries, and they run farther than most people realize.

The carotid arteries start at the aortic arch in the chest. There are two, right and left. Each climbs the neck, then splits into an internal carotid and an external carotid.

The internal carotid has no branches in the neck and goes to the brain. The external carotid supplies the face, scalp, and neck. Together they are the blood supply you cannot afford to treat casually.

This is the anatomy I work around every time I perform an ACDF. The operation is done through the front of the neck, and the carotid artery is not what I am operating on. It is what I have to respect to reach the spine.

I find the pulse, stay medial to the carotid sheath, and retract that sheath laterally while the airway and esophagus move the other way. The disc sits in the window between them. The vessel you feel when you check a neck pulse is the same vessel that has to be protected for every level of an anterior cervical fusion.

— Dr Steven Cyr | Orthopedic Spine Surgeon | 📍 Houston and San Antonio

Follow our page if you want spine anatomy like this. We post the cases, the structures, and the part of the operation most people never see.

This scan is real. The story going around with it is not.

You have probably seen this 3D CT posted as a high-speed motorcycle crash, with the spine “snapped in half” and the pelvis “beyond repair.” I am a spine surgeon. That is not what this picture shows.

What I can see is high-energy blunt trauma. The face and skull are badly fractured. The head is distracted from the neck, which is the dangerous spinal injury on this view, not a mid-back cut in two. There are multiple rib fractures. The pelvic ring is disrupted. That pelvis injury can bleed fast enough to kill, and it is not beyond repair.

The red is a color setting on the 3D render. It is not a map of shattered bone. No one has produced the case, so I will not invent a motorcycle crash for a scan I did not read.

Motorcycle crashes do cause this pattern. So do car ejections and falls from height. A helmet only solves one part of it. The brain, the chest, the belly, and the pelvis take the rest.

— Dr Steven Cyr • Orthopedic Spine Surgeon

Follow SASpine for the health news, and for the correction when a viral scan gets the anatomy wrong.

From a walker and a brace to a badge and a K9 partner. That is the recovery this officer fought for.

He came out of a 9-hour surgery, four discs replaced, with no lower back, leg, or nerve pain. He has his quality of life back, and he is getting stronger every day.

“I came out of a 9 hr surgery (4 discs were replaced) with literally no lower back, leg, or nerve pain. I got my quality of life back and working on getting stronger each day. God is good! Thanks to Dr. Steven Cyr, Marcus Wayne Trejo (rehab), and the amazing staff at SASpine! Also, thanks to my wife and kids for their support (I was difficult).” — A. Canis

I have enormous respect for the men and women in blue. They run toward the calls the rest of us hope never come. When an officer cannot stand, walk, or do the job without nerve pain, a family and a city are waiting on a spine that can work again. It is an honor to help one of them get back to that duty.

— Dr Steven Cyr

If back pain, leg pain, or nerve pain is keeping you from the work and the people you love, we would be glad to see you. Send SASpine a message (contact info in bio).

A New York nurse says she lived with unexplained abdominal pain for years. A CT scan in October 2025 is what finally showed the cause.

Jana Petriganova DeGregoris, a cardiothoracic nurse practitioner in the Mount Sinai system, and her husband filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court on September 24. The complaint says a surgical needle about 1.5 inches long was left in her abdomen.

The filing does not say which operation it was. It names a C-section with plastic wound closure on June 28, 2018, and an abdominoplasty with umbilical hernia repair on November 17, 2021. She alleges the needle was found on October 14, 2025, and removed in a later surgery.

Before the incision is closed, every needle, sponge, and instrument on the sterile field should be counted. If something is missing, the case stops until it is found or we have imaged for it. A patient should never be the one who discovers a needle years later.

— Dr. Steven Cyr

The hospital and the three named physicians have not commented. There is no ruling.

She works in surgery, at the same hospital. If a needle can still be left inside her, what does that mean for everyone else? Tell us what you think. 👇

Follow our page for health news and updates worth knowing.

Silent plaque is hiding in more than half of adults with no known heart disease.

A landmark imaging study in the New England Journal of Medicine scanned 16,808 adults in Denmark and Spain, ages 18 to 70, none with a known heart problem. Plaque was already there in 57 percent of them.

The age curve is the part worth remembering.

• Under 30: about 1 in 13
• In the 30s: about a third of men and a fifth of women
• By 60 to 70: about 9 in 10

Men developed it 5 to 10 years earlier. Women had their steepest rise between 40 and 60. Most early plaque was small, and often in the neck or leg arteries, not a heart attack waiting to happen.

In my practice I see the same pattern in the spine. People feel fine, then a problem that has been building for years finally announces itself. Feeling well does not mean the arteries were clean. Blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking, sleep, and consistent training still matter long before symptoms show up.

— Dr Steven Cyr

Follow this page for health news and updates worth knowing, including the studies that do not make it into a routine visit.