Spinal Decompression Or Back Surgery, Which Is The Right Choice For You?

For people with severe disc-related back pain and sciatica, long-term relief can be hard to come by and the treatment options often come down to spinal decompression or back surgery. Each treatment option has its pros and cons, but in the end, the best option will depend on a variety of factors that are unique to each case.

There are some misconceptions about both spinal decompression and surgery that can lead to confusion when attempting to determine the best treatment option, especially when pain or medication may be disrupting the ability to think clearly. The following information will help to dispel some of the misconceptions regarding these forms of treatment and will assist pain sufferers in selecting which option is best for their circumstances.

Spinal decompression is an advanced form of traction, but it has very different effects on the spinal discs than regular traction. Due to computer-controlled motors, true spinal decompression systems can “trick” the muscles along the spine into staying relaxed during treatment, allowing for the creation of a suction force within the disc that pulls bulging disc material back inward and also enhances disc hydration and nutrition that will subsequently promote disc healing. Because regular traction systems must fight the muscles, there is far less of an effect on the disc, and regular traction is usually insufficient to produce any long-term relief of disc-related pain.

Despite the fact that spinal decompression is highly successful in treating most cases of disc-related pain, it is not 100% effective and there are situations in which it is contraindicated. In my San Antonio Spinal Decompression practice, it has been my experience that it is usually not very effective when a patient has a severe disc extrusion, or a full rupture of the disc, rather than just bulging. Spinal decompression is not safe to use when the patient has spinal instability in the are of the damaged disc. In cases where spinal decompression is not appropriate, surgery is indicated as really the only option for getting long term relief for the patient.

Although it may be the best option in a small number of disc-pain cases, back surgery is far from being an ideal solution. Patients sometimes have the impression that a back surgery will completely solve their back pain once and for all, but this is rarely the case. In fact, one of the leading predictors that someone will eventually need back surgery in the future is having had back surgery in the past. Although aggressive surgical techniques that involve removing a problematic disc will guarantee that a patient will not have any trouble with that particular disc again, these surgeries create other problems that over time can make things even worse than the original problem.

Post-surgical scar tissue and increased wear and tear on adjacent discs can conspire to create new areas of spinal cord and/or spinal nerve compression months or years after spinal surgery. Due to the high probability of these post-surgical complications, it is my opinion that surgery should always be considered a last option when all other treatments have either failed or cannot be used due to existing contraindications.

For a FREE report with additional information on spinal decompression and back surgery, visit the Spinal Decompression In San Antonio website.

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