During the spine surgery, your surgeon decompresses, moves, and fixes vertebral structures and replaces them if required. Spine surgery is the best option when conservative treatment has failed, and pain persists and hinders the normal routine.
Who Needs Spine Surgery?
Your neurosurgeon recommends spinal surgery to correct spinal conditions like degenerative disc disease, herniated disc, and spinal stenosis. This surgery offers to ease the pain and numbness associated with spinal pain, which in most cases radiates to other parts of the back, arms, and legs. Compression of a nerve within the back and spinal cord leads to pain within it. Disc issues and herniated disc make end up pressing the vertebra against the nerve very hard. In rare cases, osteoarthritis causes the excess bone in the spine.
How Is Spine Surgery Performed?
There are different types of spine surgery, and your neurosurgeon decides which one best suit a particular condition. Types of spine surgery include:
Spinal fusion: This is one of the most common surgeries for chronic non-specific backache with degenerative changes. Your neurosurgeon will join spinal bones, and vertebrae together, which restricts the motion between them and how far nerves can stretch.
Laminectomy: This is common surgery done to correct lumbar spinal stenosis. In this surgery, the neurosurgeon removes part of the bone spurs of ligaments in your back. This aids to alleviate pressure on spinal nerves and reduce pain and weakness. But sometimes the surgery can make the spine less stable. Then the patient may need spinal fusion as well.
Foraminotomy: This surgery is done to alleviate pain caused by a compressed nerve in the spine. Your neurosurgeon cuts away bone at the sides of your vertebrae to stretch the space where nerves exit the spine.
Diskectomy: At times, the disk, the cushion that separates vertebrae, can slip out of its original place and pressure the spinal nerve, resulting in back pain. In diskectomy, the surgeon removes all parts of the disk
Disk Replacement: In this surgery, the surgeon removes the damaged spinal disk and places an artificial one between the vertebrae. This surgery allows you to continue to move your spine. Recovery is much faster than for a spinal fusion.