Saint Luke’s News: Forget what you’ve heard about back surgery then, here’s how it has evolved

Just about everyone knows what it means to deal with low back pain at one point or another. Roughly eight out of 10 adults suffer from low back pain sometime in their lives, and it’s the leading cause of disability worldwide, according to a study in The Lancet medical journal.

When more conservative treatments—like physical and occupation therapy or epidural steroid injections—aren’t enough to treat chronic back pain, surgery may be the solution.

In the past, the words “back surgery” meant long recovery times and a higher chance of complications with traditional open procedures. But a lot has changed in the past decade with minimally invasive surgery.

Saint Luke’s Marion Bloch Neuroscience Institute has a team of seven highly-specialized neurosurgeons and the most experience with the latest minimally invasive spine surgeries in the Kansas City area.

The most common spine surgeries that are now minimally invasive include: removing a herniated or degenerative disc in the lower spine (lumbar discectomy), removing a portion of the vertebra to alleviate pressure on the spinal cord or nerves (lumbar laminectomy), and fusing two or more vertebrae to reduce pain or correct deformity (single or double lumbar fusion).

These minimally invasive procedures require much smaller incisions, which in turn, means a faster recovery. Incisions for the lumbar discectomy and lumbar laminectomy are less than the width of a dime. An incision for the lumbar fusion is less than the width of a nickel. Specially trained surgeons can then split the muscle or ligament to get to the area they need to work on, rather than stripping the muscle off the spine.

Patients that undergo these advanced procedures not only have quicker recovery times in the end, but they are also able to go home sooner.

Saint Luke’s experienced team continues to work to expand these minimally invasive techniques to more complex surgeries such as treating spinal deformity and removing tumors.

Saint Luke’s Hospital is one of several leading neurosurgical groups participating in the Quality Outcomes Database (QOD), a national clinical registry sponsored by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. The purpose and objective of the registry is to assess the benefit spine surgery may provide to patients and to evaluate to what extent surgery improves pain, disability, and quality of life.

Learn more about spine surgery and Saint Luke’s Integrated Spine Program or call 816-932-6770.