Back pain is extremely common yet especially difficult to treat. Massage, spinal manipulation are part of common efforts to get rid of back pain. For serious back problems, complicated back surgery might be what is needed.
It turns out there is in fact something in the middle, in terms of treatment, called nucleoplasty. This procedure, developed in the last decade, is minimally invasive, and makes actual changes to the back that can decrease pain and improve mobility.
Nucleoplasty is meant to treat pain from herniated spinal discs. Spinal discs serve as the soft cushion between each vertebrae. When the integrity of a disc is compromised, it can bulge out, or undergo other painful changes, pinching nerves and causing other damage that makes life worse for the individual.
With nucleoplasty, a surgeon will use image guidance and a special instrument to remove a small amount of the pain-causing disc, to relieve pressure on the nerves and restore better structure to that specific area of the spine. The procedure requires only a small precision, and doesn't affect a spine's stability.
Who is it for?
Nucleoplasty, also known as percutaneous discectomy, is meant to treat chronic, persistent back pain from faulty discs. If your back troubles have persisted for more than six weeks, it is probably time to see a doctor or spine specialist who can identify a herniated disc and other back problems.
Another sign that nuceloplasty might be a procedure to look into is if you can’t move enough to comfortably perform regular activities like bathing and dressing. If bed rest, medication and physical therapy haven’t done very much to resolve your problems, removing part of the herniated disc might be the best option.
What is the procedure like?
Patients are given sedatives and a local anesthesia before the procedure begins, which usually takes an hour to complete.
The patient is awake during procedure, which allows for important feedback to the physician. A specialized device is inserted into the flawed area of the spine, and then releases radio wave energy that causes some of the spinal disc to dissolve. As the disc is altered, the herniation begins to retract, and the irritation that hernation causes to nerves begins to reduce.
There is sometimes mild pain and pressure that comes with the modifying the spinal disc. Afterwards, there may be mild pain for a few days.
Studies on the effectiveness of nucleoplasty find it to be successful more than 80 percent of the time.
But not all disc problems can be treated with nucleoplasty. Narrowed discs, a spine that isn’t aligned properly or other spinal instabilities make a person a bad candidate for the procedure. Discs in the neck can’t be treated.
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