Spinal Decompression

One of the most common surgeries of the spine is a spinal discectomy. Approximately 1% of the US population deals with a herniated lumbar disc with sciatica at any one point in time.

First, only a few individuals who are dealing with sciatica end up needing a spinal lumbar discectomy surgery, but if it does become necessary one of the questions is - what are the benefits of having the surgery performed in a minimally invasive fashion?

It sounds very sexy when you hear the words "minimally invasive". You get visions of no blood loss, an incision the size of a pinhead, and also visions of being up and walking five minutes after the surgery. In reality, only part of that is true.

Minimally invasive surgery began about 10 years ago with spine surgery and has continued to progress with better and better instrumentation. There are plastic tubes that surgeons can operate through, which spread muscle instead of cutting through and completely splitting it. Surgeons can use their headlights to look down the tube and there are excellent suction devices that double as a device for pulling tissue out of the way. But that still doesn't answer the question does it?

Numerous studies have been performed looking at minimally invasive spine surgery. The studies so far have shown that blood loss between a minimally invasive type of spine surgery and a normal type of discectomy are pretty much equivalent. In addition patients have not shown a statistically significant improvement in recovery time with minimally invasive surgery. There have been some trends in the data, but nothing has been definitively proven. In addition, times in surgery have not truly been altered with him minimally invasive approach.

Minimally invasive spine surgery is not going away anytime soon. In the relative scheme of things, the surgery is still fairly new and hopefully larger studies will prove the benefits of utilizing it. In theory there should be less pain postoperatively and quicker recovery time along with less harm to a patients musculature. It just makes sense when you're working through a tube as opposed to cutting through a lot of tissue.

For now, there are plenty of anecdotal reports of patients doing much better with a minimally invasive approach. The results of a regular discectomy are very very good, so either way patients are still doing fine with the procedure, although there are some small but real risks associated with it.