Back Surgery

Neck and Back Surgery Health Center

Is surgery for neck or back pain necessary? The answer is: sometimes. It is reasonable to consider spine surgery if the pain has not diminished after several months of non-surgical treatment, if your pain does not respond to narcotic medications, or if you are unable to complete basic daily activities. But fear not - there's a wide array of surgery options. Some are minimally invasive procedures (e.g. microdiscectomy for a herniated disc) allow for a quick recovery, while other types of surgery (e.g. a posterolateral fusion for degenerative disc disease) are more extensive and have a much longer recovery time. Understanding your surgery options will help you better decide on a course of action.

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Back Surgery and Neck Surgery

The primary purpose of back surgery or neck surgery is to correct an anatomical lesion in individuals who fail to show improvement with conservative treatment. For those patients who have pain, but no anatomical lesion can be identified that accounts for their pain, surgery is not an option. Surgery is useful only to change a patient’s anatomy (e.g. remove a disc herniation). There is almost never any reason to consider exploratory surgery to “look” for a cause of pain.
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Cervical Spine Surgery

Cervical spine surgery is generally performed on an elective basis to treat either Nerve/spinal cord impingement (decompression surgery) or Spinal instability (fusion surgery). The two procedures are often combined, as a decompression may de-stabilize the spine and create the need for a fusion to add stability...
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