How Can One Avoid Surgery With a Herniated Disc?

In America at any one point in time about 1% of the population suffers from a lumbar herniated disc. This can cause disabling sciatica with leg pain and possibly muscle weakness and maybe pins and needles and numbness as well.

Surgery has been shown to work extremely well over 90% of time at getting rid of a patient's leg pain. But the best course of action is to avoid having the surgery necessary if possible. How can this be accomplished? There are multiple methods of treatment that have been shown in research studies to be effective and should be tried prior to undergoing the knife.

The 1st treatments that tend to work well for a herniated disc are medications. The initial medications should include over-the-counter ones such as Tylenol and anti-inflammatory drugs such as naproxen and ibuprofen. These may not provide enough pain relief, so patients may need to see a pain management doctor to receive narcotics along with muscle relaxers and potentially higher doses of the anti-inflammatories. Additionally, there are medications called neuromodulating agents, which are known as Neurontin and Lyrica. These may act to decrease the sciatica pain, as narcotic medications often are not as effective as you may think.

Additional treatment options include those performed at a physical therapy clinic. These are great for helping patients stretch and strengthen the muscles of the back and lower committees. Also there are modalities that can be performed at a PT clinic including electrical stimulation, ultrasound, along with ice and heat. Treatment with a chiropractor may also provide significant benefit asthis may include spinal adjustments, along with rehab exercises similar to physical therapy clinic.

There is a new revolutionary treatment that has come about over last decade called spinal decompression therapy. This is a noninvasive intermittent traction type of treatment that is performed over multiple sessions and may bring significant pain relief. Studies have shown this to be effective over 80% of the time.

If patients are still not achieving significant relief, then interventional pain management comes in to play. This includes epidural injections performed at a pain clinic for achieving pain relief with steroid medication bathing the pinched nerve root. The steroid acts as a tremendous anti-inflammatory agent and knocks out the inflammation which is what is causing the sciatica pain. They have been shown to be effective approximate 75% of the time.

If neither the injections for the medications worthy exercise treatments are effective at relieving the pain within 6 to 8 weeks, then surgery should be considered. Especially if there is muscle weakness involved.

But studies have shown that one year time frame, surgery is no more effective than conservative treatment with the outcomes achieved. So if pain relief can be achieved and the body can be allowed to disintegrate the piece of disc that is pushing on the nerve root then that is optimal.