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If you are unable to perform daily activities, or the quality of your lifestyle has been severely affected by spinal stenosis symptoms, your health care provider may recommend spinal stenosis surgery as the next step in your recovery. Surgery for spinal stenosis may also be recommended after 6 months of treatment without results to avoid permanent damage to the spinal nerve roots. Most experts agree that surgery has a high success rate for relieving pain and other symptoms associated with spinal stenosis.
Open back surgery for spinal stenosis
Decompressive Laminectomy: Narrowing of the spinal canal can be caused by bone spurs or thickened tissue. Spinal stenosis symptoms occur when narrowing of the spinal canal applies force or pressure on the spinal cord or spinal nerve roots. A laminectomy is a surgical procedure preformed to remove bone spurs or excessive thickened tissue, thereby removing the pressure and relieving the symptoms. Laminectomy surgery usually requires a large incision in the patients back. Although it’s dependent on the patients health, most patients that undergo spinal stenosis surgery will not return to normal activities for several months.
Minimally invasive spinal stenosis surgery
Foramintomy: A foraminotomy uses an arthroscopic approach to opening the foramen without need of general anesthesia. It is performed to relieve the pressure being applied to a nerve by the intervertebral foramen. The foramen is the area in the vertebra where the nerve roots exit the spinal canal. You can find more detailed information about how a foraminotomy is performed here.
Laminotomy - A laminotomy uses an arthroscopic approach to opening the spinal canal, thus being able to be performed without the need of general anesthesia or lengthly hospital stays. A laminotomy is a spinal stenosis surgery performed to relieve pressure caused by a narrowing spinal canal, increasing the amount of space available for the exiting nerve roots and spinal cord. The increased amount of space releases the entrapped nerves relieving the symptoms caused by spinal stenosis.
A laminotomy is also a procedure used to remove the ligamentum flavum, a ligament in the spinal canal that can thicken to the point where it is actually compressing on the spinal cord, attributing to spinal stenosis. During the laminotomy most patients feel immediate relief to their symptoms as the nerves are released.
Please click here for more detailed information about these and other minimally invasive spinal stenosis procedures available to you.