Invasive Disc Surgery

[EricS]

Surgery is the final treatment for many lower back conditions like bulging disc or herniated disc. Even the best surgeon will advise you try other remedies first, because surgery always has this element of risk.

However, disc surgery has been performed for quite a long time, and while newer methods can cut down on your hospitalization time, conventional methods can improve your disc condition quite decisively. Here are two disc surgery methods - one traditional and the other new.

Spinal Fusion Surgery
The surgeon takes a bone graft to fuse two vertebrae and attaches screws to keep the graft in place and let it grow. This causes damaged vertebrae to stop moving so that the patient gets relief from pain.

Artificial disc replacement
This is a new FDA approved surgical technique where the surgeon makes an incision in the abdomen and replaces the damaged lumbar disc with an artificial disc.

Like in most surgical procedures, the patient in both the above situations needs to visit the doctor on annual check ups to ensure everything is fine.

However, there are many modern surgical procedures that are much less invasive and drastically reduce recovery time.

[Leeann]

What many patients don't know is that whether you have regular spinal surgery or fusion, you will undoubtedly need further surgery later on due to the spine becoming unstable. This happens more often than not. Unfortunately the doctors don't tell their patients this. The other levels end up having to take up more of the load. Also recent studies have shown that in the U.S. there has been an alarming increase in spinal surgeries and the majority of these cases would have done just as good with conservative care!! The trouble is they weren't given that option. I've had 2 open spinal surgeries (this was before the internet) and I don't care if my spine is falling out, they aren't going to touch me again. Due to surgery, I'm now permanently disabled.

[admin]

Oh my goodness Leeann, that is terrible.

Do you feel comfortable sharing a little more detail on what sort of surgery you had, so that others here can learn some of the implications.

[Leeann]

I had a hemilaminectomy/diskectomy first on L4-5 ~ then L3-4 failed and I had the same surgery on that level. Since those surgeries the whole spine has basically gone to "pot" and I'm now disabled. I have several herniations, but now since being so inactive I have osteoporosis and have been deemed inoperable. This all happened before the internet, and before I was able to research and talk to the amount of people I've been able to speak to about their backs and surgeries.