Lumbar Surgery for Disk Herniation

A herniated disk may come on so suddenly you make wake in the morning and unable to get out of bed. Sometimes sneezing,coughing heavy lifting may cause this to occur. You may have bulging disk that has now herniated. Not knowing for sure what you have done to deserve this pain you take some ibuprofen and off to work you go or try to go. By the next day you may be in so much pain that you are having trouble standing straight , walking and your just miserable.

Sometimes using ice within the first 24 hours and then switching to heat will take care of back strain. If this does not work or if pain is increasing see your doctor. He will either prescribe physical therapy , pain med or both and possible MRI.

Pain shooting down your legs , numbness and tingling should be checked right away. There is a possibility of pieces of disk breaking off and wedging into a nerve root and this could be excruciating pain. The concern also would be affecting your bowels and bladder and that is an emergency.

If surgery is needed either a neurosurgeon or ortho spine surgeon should be checked into. Epidural may help with the pain control until surgery is performed.
There are pros and cons for the surgery.

Pros (1. they remove the disk piece and clean out the area and you are set to go ) 2.(You leave the hosp in 24 hours with just the soreness from surgery)
(3. You could be back to work in 4-6 weeks. and just have some precautions to take.)

Cons( 1. You may have more numbness then before until the nerves heal. (2. you could develop infection at the incision site, watch for redness, drainage.)
(3. worst of all you could develop scar tissue growing into the area that they cleaned out and you develop more pain then before and numbness will not
go away do to the pressure on the nerves.

This scar tissue may cause severe cramping of the leg, tingling in the toes, foot drop. A lot of pain. Epidural injections may help provide some relief , you may need to have the scar tissue removed. This would be called laminotomy , sometimes laser procedure can be done to break up the scar tissue. A specialist will need to perform this procedure.

Something that is very helpful if this happens is to stretch your legs every morning. Keep moving because sitting around causes stiffness of the muscles. Keep in mind that the nerves regulate the muscles so if your nerves are compromised the muscles will become tight and painful.

Do the research before going for surgery. You may have options