Surgery and Other Treatments of Back Pain

If your back pain is chronic, or if it doesn't sufficiently improve using Self-Care / Self Treatment, Medications and Therapies, or Chronic Back Pain options listed above, then a range of surgical treatment options may be available and appropriate.

If you suffer from unrelenting or chronic back pain, or if nerve compression is causing worsening muscle weakness, then you surgery might be an effective option.

However, surgery is a suitable treatment option for very few of people who suffer from back pain. reason for this is that surgery is usually reserved for a very limited range of back pain causes, such as back pain resulting from a Herniated Disc. At current time, surgical techniques are largely ineffective for muscle or soft-tissue related causes of back pain.

Following types of back surgery are currently available:

Artificial Disc Replacement Surgery: is surgery to replace a degenerated disc with an artificial disc.

Discectomy / Microdiscectomy: is surgery to correct a Spinal Disc Herniation, which causes pain to radiate down arm or leg.

Fusion: This surgical treatment involves joining (or fusing) two vertebrae together in order to eliminate pain-causing movement between bones.

Intradiscal Electrothermal Therapy (IDET): is a treatment where a doctor inserts a needle into disc via a catheter. The needle is then heated for approximately 20 minutes. heat from the needle seals and thickens the wall of the disc inside the spine, reducing disc bulge and nerve compression or pinching that such disc bulging has caused.

Kyphoplasty and Vertebroplasty: are procedures that are designed to reduce pain, which is caused by osteoporotic compression fractures of one or more vertebrae.

Laminectomy or Laminotomy: This operation removes part of one or more of vertebra which are bones making up your Spinal Column. It's a procedure carried out as it sometimes relieves leg related pain which results from bony spurs or disc fragments that have protruded into the Spinal Canal and compress or pinch on nerves within the spine.

Back Pain