All About Back Surgeries

Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

Surgery is the word that no one wants to hear when they are looking into treatment for back pain. No one wants to have surgery unless it’s absolutely necessary, so it’s comforting to hear that most cases of back surgery are elective.

That is, if you choose to have back surgery, you can. However, it’s not necessary.

The main concerns with back surgery for patients are the great risks involved in operating in this area. Since the spinal cord is such a delicate part of the back, it’s always a possibility that the cord could get severed during surgery and the patient could end up paralyzed.

This doesn’t happen often, but there is always a risk.

The kind of back surgery you might have will depend, of course, on the kind of back issue you have.

There are several goals when you have back surgery:

• The decompression of a nerve to alleviate pain
• Correct curvature – i.e. scoliosis
• Correct abnormal growths
• Stabilize a deformity, like a loosened disc
• Help prevent discs from rubbing together by shaving away pieces of spine

Here are some of the back surgeries that can be performed to help with back pain:

• Spinal Fusion
As the name suggests, this is a surgery in which the spine is fused together to prevent movement. This is often done when there is a natural curve in the spine that the patient wants corrected, or from an injury. The spine is fused together with plates and rods.

• Cervical Decompression
When you have herniated discs, a doctor can help to alleviate pain by removing the herniated areas and replacing them with hardware.

• Microdisectomy
This is a smaller surgery in which the neck is primarily involved. The surgeon is trying to help alleviate pressure on the nerves, but they can not move the spinal column too much as there is not as much space in the neck area as there is in the back.

• Cervical Laminectomy
In cases where the patient has stenosis or hardening of the spinal column, the patient can opt to have the lamina (the material that covers the spinal cord) removed in order to allow for more movement of the spinal column.

• Vertebroplasty
An outpatient procedure in which the surgeon places a cement mixture into the vertebrae to stabilize the bones and prvent pain.

• Intradiscal Electrothermal Therapy (IDT)
This is a fairly new surgery that uses a heated wire that is threaded through the disks and an electrical current is sent through the wire in order to promote collagen fiber strength.

• Disc Replacement
Of course, if you have discs that are weakened, you can always have them replaced with metal hardware.

• Trigger Point Therapy
While this isn’t necessarily considered a surgical procedure, as it is done in an outpatient setting with a local anesthetic, you will need a surgeon or other health care professional to administer the treatment. Small needles are simply injected into the muscles in order to hit certain proven trigger points (much in the same way that acupuncture and acupressure do) and release the muscle tightness. Some treatments will include a shot of steroids along with the needles, but other physicians opt not to include any additional medications.

All of these surgeries come with great risks, but for those who have been dealing with back pain for all of their lives or who have been in catastrophic accidents, these may be the only way to reconfigure the body and make them healthy again.

Surgery is something you will want to discuss extensively with your physician. Not all surgeries are for everyone and all surgeries carry risks like:

• Potential reactions to anesthesia
• Further damage to the back
• Loss of feeling in areas of the body
• Blood loss
• Infection
• A need for subsequent surgeries
• Pain
• Potential for death

Getting second and third opinions is recommended in the case of back surgeries. You want to make sure that the medical field concurs that it is your only and your best option for recovery.

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