Description
UAMS Health orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Sam Overley answers some common questions about back and neck pain.
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Transcript
As odd enough as it sounds, back and neck pain typically do not require surgery. Even people who have some pain that radiates down the legs or down the arms typically resolves on the order of 75 to 80% of the time after an acute disc herniation.
Depending on what the problem is and what the best approach is to fix it, recovery can be as simple as a week or so on a same-day operation, such as what you might see with a lumbar microdiscectomy — a minimally invasive procedure we perform under a surgical microscope. If the patient requires stabilization due to instability, particularly in the lumbar spine, the recovery may be more on the order of three to six weeks.
Part of the reason I became an orthopaedic surgeon to begin with was to help people restore function. People often come in debilitated states from different joint or bone pathology that we were able to fix and restore function rather quickly.
I also like the fact that it’s quite variable in terms of treatment. We could be doing a very small incision and fixing a problem that is debilitating someone, through a tube with a very quick return of function and very quick recovery. There are also the bigger macro aspects of spine surgery that involve fixing deformities of the spine.
It’s the variation and the return of function and helping patients and making them better quickly that I really enjoy.
