The man charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson reportedly suffered from debilitating back pain.
The owner of Luigi Mangione's former apartment in Honolulu, Hawaii, told the Associated Press his pain stemmed from an apparent pinched nerve, which he'd had for years. A spokesperson for the owner said Mangione at one time left Hawaii for a surgical procedure.
An image from social media profiles belonging to Mangione also showed x-rays of a spine with implanted screws — though it has not yet been confirmed if the image is of Mangione himself.
Mangione also appeared to post messages to Reddit in which he discussed spondylolisthesis, a condition where vertebrae may slip out of alignment and may cause pain. According to reports from multiple outlets, the account has since been deactivated and law enforcement officials are reviewing its content.
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Scripps News spoke with spine surgeon Dr. Christopher Good, who explained spondylolisthesis and how it may be treated.
"Spondylolisthesis is a potential reason for someone to have a spine fusion at a young age. In our spine, our low back, our vertebrae are stacked one on top of the other with the discs, the cushions, between," Good said. "If somebody gets a stress fracture or a break, one bone can start to slide back and forth, becoming unstable. As the bones move back and forth, that can trigger back pain, or if it pinches the nerves in between the bones, that can trigger pain where the nerves come out of the spine and travel down the legs."
"One potential treatment can be a spinal fusion," Good said. "That involves literally using implants — screws, or rods or cages — to hold the bones in position and bone grafts to literally weld those bones together so that they no longer slip and slide, and pinch things."
A 2021 study of more than 66,000 elective lumbar spine fusion surgeries for spondylolisthesis found the average hospital costs for the procedure were $30,827 in 2019, or $37,638 when adjusted for 2024 inflation.
Watch the full interview with Good in the video above.
