Lower Back Surgery: An Overview

In most cases, lower back pain can be treated without lower back surgery by:

 

• Using analgesics
• Reducing inflammation
• Restoring proper function and strength to the back
• Preventing recurrence of the injury.

 

In the most serious cases, when the condition does not respond to other therapies, lower back surgery may provide lower back pain relief that is caused by back problems or by serious musculoskeletal injuries. While some cases of lower back surgery may be performed in a doctor's office under local anesthesia, others require hospitalization. It may be months following lower back surgery before a person is fully healed, and the patient may suffer from permanent loss of flexibility. Since invasive lower back surgery is not always successful, it should only be performed in people with progressive neurologic disease or damage to the peripheral nerves.

 

Types of lower back surgery include:

 

• Discectomy
• Foraminotomy
• Intradiscal electrothermal therapy
• Nucleoplasty
• Radiofrequency lesioning
• Spinal fusion
• Laminectomy
• Rhizotomy, cordotomy, or dorsal root entry zone operation.

 

Discectomy is one of the more common ways to remove pressure on a nerve root from a bulging disc or bone spur. During this procedure, the surgeon will take out a small piece of the lamina (the arched bony roof of the spinal canal) to remove the obstruction below.