Back disc surgery for back pains related to disc slips or damaged discs

Back pains related to disc slips or damaged discs can cause extreme misery and trauma to patients. Damage to the back can happen because of old age or due to abusing the spine or back by lifting or moving heavy weights. The Spinal cord is made up of bones or vertebrae that are stacked on top of one another and held together by flexible plates called discs. This arrangement is what helps us bend and be flexible.

Sometimes these discs get damaged or can slip out of place. This by itself can cause a lot of pain. There are also cases where the slipped discs can be pressing one or more nerves and pain will shoot up through the nerves when the patient moves or lies down in a particular posture. Back disc surgery is required to treat such patients in cases where other treatments have failed to cure the pain.

In case of back disc surgery to cure pinned nerves, the patient will be given general anesthetic and a cut in the lower back will be made down to the back bone. The nerve will be decompressed or released by removing or moving the disc. If required, the soft part of the disc might be removed and wound will be closed with stitches. After such a back disc surgery, patients can leave the hospital after two to three days of surgery

In case of back surgery to remove damaged disc, initially a surgery will be made to get bone grafts from the patient’s hips. Then back disc surgery will be performed to remove the disc that is causing the problem and the bone chips taken earlier will be packed in the required manner and placed in the gap between the vertebrae. These will grow and fuse the vertebrae together. In such a back disc surgery it is common that the patient experience pain in the place of the bone graft even after the back pain has receded.

Newer inventions are making this kind of back disc surgery (also called spinal fusion surgery) easier, with the use of genetically produced protein in place of bone grafts to induce the bone to grow and fuse the vertebrae together. This does away with the need for the initial surgery to remove the bone graft

Artificial disc can also be used in certain cases to cure the back by removing the degenerated disc during a surgery. The artificial disc will be placed in the place of the removed disc. Not everyone can be a candidate to artificial disc surgery. Some of these are that the problem should be in only one disc and the patient should not have undergone prior back surgeries.

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