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Your Online Guide » Common Illness » Upper Back and Neck Pain

[L615]Low Back Pain Surgery
by Peter Marsden, Pet
Will Back Surgery Work?
If you suffer from severe and chronic back pain, and you're considering surgery, it's important to look at serious alternatives: surgery is final, and if it doesn't work...
Back pain is often treated by surgery, when physiotherapy and drugs fail. But surgery also often doesn't work; in fact, that there's a clinical term for failure: Failed Back Surgery Syndrome! Perhaps this should be something surgeons suffer? - but sadly it refers to back pain patients... To my mind, if a treatment doesn't work and has an expectation of not working.. it is not a treatment at all; it's an experiment at best and desperation at worst...
Some Reasons Why Surgery Doesn't Work
This isn't advice that you should not have surgery. It's offering a window of consideration before making a vital decision: remember once you have surgery, that's final.. There are several surgical procedures for back pain, and they try to do one of two things: remove the pressure on the nerve that registers pain or stabilize the spine.
Say you have a herniated disc: The pain is there because the disc is pressing on a nerve. On the surface of it the solution is to remove the part of the disc that's touching the nerve. But it's not that simple...
1. Once the operation is done, your body goes through a recovery process. That process can include a lot of pain and awkward movement just to get you through each day. Here's where you could meet difficulties.... The awkward movements you're making will be putting unnatural wear and tear on other areas of your body. Areas where that might cause propblems would be above or below the surgery site, and in other joints such as the hips or sacroiliac.
You might have already found that your back condition causes you to hold your body in an un-natural pose that puts strain on limb joints. I used to get knee pain from the way I walked with lower back pain..
2. Back pain surgery is going to done near to nerves. Surgery means scar tissue and a build up in this can make contact with a nerve. This can be painful, just as if the disc was still pressing on the nerve.
3. Post-op rehabilitation is most likely only going to address your post-operative pain. It will aim to improve functional "activities of daily living" - things like taking a bath, dressing yourself, toiletting. This enables you to go home quickly and be safe; but post-op rehab won't address the long-term causes of the pain.
The Causes of Back Pain
Most back pain conditions are related to problems with postural alignment. Think of it as being similar to a car having a tyre out of alignment. For our body, improper alignment means an abnormal curvature of the spine and abnormal orientation of the pelvis. The way to get our bodies back into alignment, so they can function normally again, is to work on getting our muscles back into alignment.
Some Important Questions If You're looking At Surgery
Before you are consider surgery, I'd recommend consulting a qualified therapist. Give this a fair shot. It needs about 60 days to fairly trial the options of doing work on stretching and strengthening your muscles to help re-align your posture. If you do this and still opt for surgery, you'll need good rehab after the operation. Your rehab will need to work on decreasing your pain in the first place, so you can go home safely. Your rehab should also address the following issues that deal with the root cause or causes of your pain.
1. Ask the surgeon and therapist to examine you for dysfunction (poor alignments), including these potential problem areas: the curvature of my spine from top to bottom the position of my pelvis (i.e. is it level or tipping)
2. The therapist should be able to explain how your muscles are out of balance - that is, tell you which muscles are strong or weak, flexible or tight in relation to one another.
3. You need to know which muscles to stretch and which ones to strengthen. You need to get the therapist to explain what each muscle group does, and that will help you to know how to do the exercises correctly.
4. You need to ask both your surgeon and your therapist to write everything down and ask them for a copy: this is part of your long-term treatment plan. What's A Success... Having a long-term plan for your back means you're looking for some measure of substantial improvement, if not cure: let's call that success.. I've been pain-free for 9 years now and having suffered back pain for around 9 years, in my forties, I think I'd have been happy with 5 years remission. That seems a reasonable goal.
One final comment on the option of surgery: the main criterion for success would be that it provides substantial relief, if not cure, for 5 years. The main reason why that goal might not be achieved is that the treatment might not be addressing the underlying cause of pain. If the treatment strategy you chose addresses the issues around muscle imbalance, then you will have a much better chance if getting onto a path to a pain-free life.

When all other forms of treatment have failed and you have no other route to take to alleviate the your back pain, it is time to consider back surgery. Although considered an elective form of surgery and very rarely classified as necessary most health insurance plans will cover back pain surgery.
Back Surgery is never to be taken lightly and this is an option that you will want to discuss with your physician to weigh all the pros and cons.


Types of conventional back surgery :

Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion (ALIF): A patient suffering from leg or back pain is a potential candidate for ALIF surgery. This back pain surgery is preformed to relieve the painful symptoms caused by the natural degeneration of the disc space.

Laminectomy: Lumbar laminectomy is an operation performed on the lower spine to relieve pressure on one or more nerve roots. The term is derived from lumbar (lower spine), lamina (part of the spinal canal's bony roof), and -ectomy (removal).
Some known problems with these forms of surgery:
With this form of back surgery about 25% of the grafts do not take making it necessary to perform another fusion.
In conventional back surgeries, including fusions, less then 50% will actually alleviate the pain and symptoms of the problem.
Recuperation is a long painful process
Other spine conditions may develop from fusions

Types of Laser Back Surgery:

Percutaneous Arthroscopic Discectomy:

Percutaneous Discectomy is a simple laser back surgery solution that relieves the pressure within the disc which, therefore alleviates the pain. With this minimally invasive procedure the patient will be able to walk out on their own accord 2-3 hours after the laser back surgery is completed. This laser back surgery is used to surgically remove herniated disc/bulging disc material that is pressing on the nerve root or spinal cord.

Laminotomy:
A laminotomy is not a laminectomy. With an arthroscopic approach to a laminotomy to open up the spinal canal general anesthesia is not required. A laminotomy is a laser back surgery procedure used to relieve pressure from the spinal canal for the existing nerve root and spinal cord. This increases the amount of space that is available for the neural tissue releasing the nerves.

Article Source : spinal stenosis relief

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Both Peter Marsden & Novatex are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Peter Marsden has sinced written about articles on various topics from Foreclosure Help, Backpain and Debt Reduction Consolidation. Peter Marsden suffered chronic back pain throughout his forties. A long-time fan of alternative treatments, he avoided 'conventional' approaches, other than basic pain relief. He found relief from the condition through alternative therapies, especially. Peter Marsden's top article generates over 6600 views. to your Favourites.

Novatex has sinced written about articles on various topics from Backpain. , . Novatex's top article generates over 5400 views. to your Favourites.
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