Early in life or in later years, almost everyone experiences acute back pain. If your back pain lasts three months or longer, you are suffering from chronic back pain. Whether acute or chronic, back pain is frustrating and dealing with it without knowing its cause can be tiring.
When you have severe back pain that comes and goes, visiting a spine surgeon can help you. A spine surgeon is an expert doctor, who knows all about your spine and can determine the cause of your back pain and treat it.
Let’s talk about how a spine surgeon can help relieve your back pain.
Determining The Cause Of Back Pain
Your back pain can originate from a spine condition or injury. It can also be due to age-related alterations in your spine. Other causes of back pain may include:
- A bulging or herniated disc
- Spinal stenosis
- Arthritis of spine
- Bony spur or spinal compression
Once the source of your back pain is identified, your spine surgeon can treat your pain.
Treatment Of Back Pain
There are two approaches to treating back pain: surgical treatment and non-surgical treatment.
Non-Surgical Treatment
Your spine surgeon’s first approach toward your back pain treatment will be non-surgical. The non-surgical treatment options include:
- Pharmacological therapy: Your spine surgeon will recommend nonsteroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), muscle relaxants, and painkillers to relieve your pain. Due to its addictive nature, opioids are not recommended at first, but if NSAIDS fail to provide your relief, your spine surgeon may suggest opioids.
- Injection therapy: Spine surgeons recommend injection-based treatment, including nerve block injection and epidural steroid injections, when oral pain medications fail to relieve your back pain. The injection may subside the pain and inflammation but is not intended for long-term use.
- Alternative treatments: With pharmacological treatments, your spine surgeon may also suggest alternative treatments such as massage therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic treatment, physiotherapy, and electric nerve stimulation.
- Diet and lifestyle modifications: Certain activities can worsen your pain and avoiding them can provide you relief. Losing extra pounds can reduce pressure on your spine and alleviate pain. It is important to eat food with anti-inflammatory properties.
Surgical treatment
When non-surgical treatments fail to fix your problem, surgery is recommended. Common surgical procedures include:
- Discectomy: When your pain is due to a herniated disc or degenerative disc disease, your spine surgeon will remove your affected cervical or lumbar disc that is pinching your nerve, thus relieving pain.
- Minimally Invasive Lumbar Decompression: A herniated disc or spinal stenosis can pinch your nerve, resulting in back pain. Your spine surgeon will recommend the two most common surgical procedures for spinal decompression. These include microdiscectomy and lumbar laminectomy.
- Lumbar Fusion: Your spinal surgeon will perform a lumbar fusion to eliminate the cause of pain such as degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, scoliosis, spondylolisthesis, spinal fracture, infection, or tumor. Your spine surgeon will fuse two-disc and form one solid bone.
- Disc Arthroplasty/Replacement: In arthroplasty, your spinal surgeon will remove the affected disc causing pain and replace it with an artificial disc. This surgery does not require bone grafting.
Back Pain Treatment by Spinal Surgeon In Colorado Springs And Denver, Colorado
Suffering from debilitating back pain can impair your mobility and quality of life. If you are seeking lasting back pain relief look no further than a spine surgeon at Front Range Spine and Neurosurgery. Our spine surgeons, Dr. Michael Rauzzino, Dr. Bradley Duhon, Dr. Edward Szuszczewicz, and Dr. Kevin Boyer, have years of experience treating back pain with surgical and non-surgical treatment options.
Schedule an appointment with one of our spine surgeons by filling our online form or calling at (303) 790-1800.
We will help you treat your back pain!
