New technologies, aging baby boomers and the improving reputations of area hospitals have back surgeries surging on Long Island.

Throughout the 15 hospitals of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, Long Island’s largest hospital chain, spine surgeries are up by more than 1,000 over the past five years and the system is on pace to perform almost 3,000 back surgeries this year.

Spinal surgeries have also jumped at South Nassau Communities Hospital by 100 a year, with 500 back procedures expected to be performed before 2007 expires, according to Mary Weiner, South Nassau’s vice president for perioperative services.

There are a number of different types of spine surgery to treat a variety of back conditions. Surgery should be considered if a patient has a significant neurological deficit, or if non-surgical therapy fails to alleviate the pain. Regarding the role of surgery for failed medical therapy in patients without a neurological deficit, a review concluded that ‘limited evidence is now available to support some aspects of surgical practice’. An MRI scan is an essential component of diagnostic evaluation. The ongoing Spine Patient outcomes Research Trial (SPORT) is addressing the role of surgery .

Some of the more common forms of surgery are:

People with severe back pain due to a ruptured disk usually recover whether they have surgery or decide to wait it out, though an operation brings immediate pain relief. And contrary to what many people are told by their surgeons, avoiding surgery does not result in nerve damage. These findings are from a large clinical trial published in November in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Many back surgeons criticized this trial before it began because they were convinced of disk surgery’s benefit. Some refused to refer their patients to a trial they saw as unethical because surgery would be withheld from some study participants, a necessary component to a study intended to randomly assign half to non-surgical treatment.

When a disc within the spine is damaged, the pain that results can be devastating. It’s a problem that’s affected many people over the years, and recently, medical advancements have been made that can help to alleviate the problem. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration of the United States in October of 2004, artificial disc surgery has been shown to be an effective way of helping those with damaged discs. In this article, we’ll discuss the surgery in order to help you to understand the process.

If you recently had a back surgery your probably still experiencing pain, the first thing you should do obviously is to ask your doctor for some form of remedies to relive back pain after surgery to help reduce your suffering. On the other hand there are a couple of techniques that can be applied at home to help you with you pain issue. However before using any of those techniques you need to talk to your doctor just to make sure that you are not going to damage you back while applying those. The most important thing to consider is that you need to allow you back to heal properly; this is why it is very important to talk to your doctor before applying any of the following techniques.

While no area in spinal surgery seems to exist without controversy, laminectomies continue to be one of the most controversial. By definition, a laminectomy is a surgical procedure in which a portion of a vertebra is removed to relieve pressure on the spinal cord on the nerve roots that emerge from the spinal canal. The procedure is often used to treat spinal stenosis, a progressive narrowing of the opening in the spinal canal.

Do surgery seems the last resort to you to get relief from severe back pain? Well, the number of cases where the doctors recommend surgery is on the increase these days. So you are not the only one who is recommended surgery to get back pain relief. But before you go through the surgery procedure, you need to take extreme care. After all it is your back! The doctor may have several patients, but you just have one back!

Unless you absolutely need an emergency surgical procedure, surgery for back pain should be the very last solution to look at to get rid of your back problems. If you are suffering from extreme back pain, you should immediately consult with your physician, and only if he recommends it, you should seek surgery for your back pain. People usually do this type of procedure when every other back treatment fails or if the causes of your back problems can only be cured by surgery for back pain

Proven Herniated Disc

I couldn’t resist the title’s corny riff on the name of the rock band and their movie, but the kind of spinal tap featured in this article was a spinal tap before Spinal Tap was Spinal Tap. (Does that make any sense?)

Known more formally as a lumbar puncture, this kind of spinal tap is a valuable medical test with an interesting history. In 1891 Heinrich Quincke, of Kiel, Germany, introduced this procedure as we know it today. His original intent was to help babies suffering from hydrocephalus (water on the brain) by draining away excess fluid, but from the outset he was also interested in lumbar puncture’s use as a diagnostic tool.

Spine surgery is done on patients who suffer from back pain or pain related to the spine. Surgical procedures on the spine are of two kinds - open procedures and minimally invasive procedures. Open procedures require large incisions and muscle stripping. These procedures also require more anesthesias, operating time, and hospitalization and recuperation time. Minimally invasive surgical techniques use tiny incisions made in the skin through which small, specialized instruments are inserted. These techniques cause minimal damages to muscle tissues. Less damage means less pain and a shorter period of hospitalization. The recovery time is also less. Different types of spine surgery can be performed utilizing minimally invasive techniques. Some types of minimally invasive spine surgery use laser technology. Lasers are used to separate or eliminate tissue.