Category: General Questions

Spine surgery is scary to most of my patients. In fact, it’s very normal for patients to tell me that they don’t want surgery, and I understand that. One of the ways that I help patients deal with that is try everything else before surgery, when I can, before we get to surgical intervention, and then discuss the risk, benefits, and trade offs, and then together we make the decision about whether or not they should have surgery.

So a pinched nerve, like any condition of the spine, in most circumstances, treatment starts with conservative treatment, including medications, physical therapy, and/or chiropractic treatment, sometimes home traction in the neck works, and then it progresses often to injections, and then ultimately the treatment for any resistant condition that’s bad enough is surgical intervention.

When patients present with what we would call a pinched nerve in the back, that would typically be pain shooting down the leg. Everybody knows about sciatica, which is pain shooting down the back of the leg from a pinched nerve. When patients have a pinched nerve in the neck, it’s typically pain shooting down one of the arms.

And the pain is experienced where the nerve runs, where the nerve, the body parts the nerve is responsible for.

So, reconstructive surgery for spinal fractures, it varies greatly depending upon where the fracture occurs. If it’s in the neck, a lot of times surgery is done through the front of the neck, back of the neck, or both if it’s very unstable. Similarly, if it’s in the low back or mid back, surgery can often be done just from the back, but sometimes requires surgery done in the front and the back depending upon the pressure of the nerves or how bad the fracture is.

Spinal fractures from severe trauma, such as very bad car accidents or motorcycle accidents, can sometimes respond to bracing. They often need reconstructive surgery.