Is back surgery really needed anymore?
May 20, 2009
More often than not, patients with chronic back pain issues come into my office concerned about a recommendation that they’ve been given by their doctor to have spinal surgery. To be honest with you, I can really understand where these patient’s concern lies. Back surgery is an extremely intensive procedure, that more often than not does not work in the long run. Patients who receive this treatment go through extreme pain as well as an extremely long recovery period.
There are plenty of conservative options available today for prospective patients before they take the leap into spinal surgery, and I think the biggest problem is a lack of awareness. One of the things we are finding is that we are able to restore normal spinal function and decrease pain by using non-surgical spinal decompression.
People are familiar with surgery as a cure, and less familiar with spinal decompression. Spinal decompression is different than spinal surgery because there are no cuts or incisions. Here is basically how it works: a patient is placed on a spinal decompression machine, in our office for example, we use the DRX 9000, for maximum spinal elongation. We are able to configure the machine for each case in order to lowers pressure in the specific disc that is causing the pain. In many cases, this creates a retraction of the disc. The best part for those suffering with herniated/bulging discs is that spinal decompression focuses on the damaged area, and not the whole spine. There is no pain and it is non-invasive.
In my opinion, this has been the #1 choice in relieving back pain and avoiding back surgery. We couple spinal decompression with rehabilitation to help aid the decompression machine to get the maximum benefits.
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