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Dr. Raiszadeh describes how lumbar disc disease is treated.
Dr. Raiszadeh:
There’s several ways to treat lumbar degenerative disc disease. The number one best way to treat lumbar degenerative disc disease is therapy. Strengthening of your back is key. If there is no instability of your back, meaning that there’s no motion in your back, by getting X-rays, standing X-rays, if there is no abnormal findings on the MRI scan, the best way to treat lumbar degenerative disc disease is strengthening and keeping your posture of your back perfect.
Again, strengthening the core muscles of your belly, strengthening the back muscles, and stretching them as well. So not only it keeps the muscles in proper alignment, it keeps everything strong as well. That is the number one way to treat it. Now 90 percent of the patients who I see I treat with therapy. Strengthening, strengthening, strengthening.
Now let’s talk about those patients who need surgery. Now those are the patients who have a huge disc bulge, herniation that’s come out pressing on the nerve. Now that usually are the ones that we operate on, are the ones who have a lot of back pain, degenerative disc disease that has caused leg pain as well.
Now there are different ways you can treat this problem. If you have a lot of leg pain, most of the time a lot of leg pain is caused by a disc that has popped out of your back and is pressing on the nerve. If you failed the lot of non-operative treatment – that would be physical therapy, injections, anti-inflammatory medicines, acupuncture, yoga, chiropractic care–all these different non-operative modalities you’ve undergone, and some are better than others, and our literature supports therapy as being the best sort of non-operative treatment.
But nevertheless, we use all these different sorts of non-operative treatment to take care of this, but if you are at that point that you have failed all these, the way you can treat this surgically is doing a laminectomy discectomy.
Now we can do a very minimally invasive surgery with a very small scar in the back, and it essentially removes the lamina which is the back part of the bone, and it allows you to get to the disc to take out that disc that’s pressing on the nerve.
Now the recovery from this procedure is very quick. It’s usually they go home the same day, but in a very small incision, maybe less than three or four centimeter incision, and you are going home the same day. Now the success of this operation is around 70 percent. So if you have a lot of leg pain, and again, the most important thing is you fail all the non-operative care; once you have failed that and you’ve had the surgery, the success of this operation is anywhere from 70 to 80 percent in resolving the leg pain.
About Dr. Raiszadeh, M.D.:
Board certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery, Dr. Ramin Raiszadeh is an orthopaedic surgeon specializing in the complex field of adult spinal surgery. He earned his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where he received the Paul Harrington Award for Research. He also completed a specialized internship and residency program at Baylor before achieving the highest level of medical education and fellowship training at the University of Texas Medical School. During this fellowship, under the directorship of multiple neurosurgeons and orthopedic spine surgeons, he became skilled in treating all forms of pediatric and adult spinal conditions.