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When the narrowing of spinal bones starts putting pressure on the spinal cord or on the spinal nerve, the body movements get into a spin. This nerve compression affects the communication between the brain and the body. Thus, one or many organs may experience sensory problems or loss of sensation. The compression may occur in the intervertebral foramen, spinal canal and in the nerve root canals. The location of the compression can be limited to one area or might be spread throughout the different sections of the spine.
Treatment: At the initial stage of the spinal stenosis, physiotherapy and medications may prove to be helpful but the advanced stages of the disease require surgery. Most of the people experience relief immediately after an intensive physiotherapy regime. Flexion, chiropractic, massage and acupuncture are the other techniques which fetch good results for the patient..
As for the medications, mostly doctors prescribe anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxers to provide relief from the spinal stenosis symptoms. And if these techniques do not prove to be fruitful, epidural cortisone healing or the nerve blocks may work.
In any case, there are many people who require surgery to treat their spinal stenosis. To provide relief to the nervous system within the vertebrae, the outpatient arthroscopic surgery might be sufficient that basically opens up the intervertebral foramen to relax the nerve cord from the surrounding structures.
In some cases, whole spinal cord needs to be de-compressed, hence, an open surgery is performed. Laminectomy is a surgical procedure that is taken into practice to properly decompress the nerve cord. Removal of enough bone and tissue structure from the spinal column is required to do so.
As for conservative treatments, though, it relieves the stenosis symptoms for some time but it is not that effective in the long run. Since the disease progresses gradually, an operation is inevitable in the long run and it is the only viable way to correct the degrading and to relieve pressure on the nerve. There is no denying that spinal stenosis can be very draining disease.
For quite sometime the doctors are trying to find good results with the conservative treatment. These treatments may include anti-inflammatory medications, pain killers and physiotherapy. Sometimes steroid injections or nerve blocks are also used to lessen the pain.
However, in case of uncontrollable pain or severe symptoms of cord compression, it is hard to avoid the surgery which is to relieve pressure on the spinal nerves. Surgical options like laminectomy or corpectomy provide more space in the spinal canal and rule out any damage to the nerve.
Minimally invasive surgery or the laser surgeries are the latest developments in the field of spinal stenosis. An endoscope is used, though it may or may not be equipped with a microscope to see the internal structure of the spine. The latest microsurgical technology allows the doctor to operate precisely and delicately.
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