Videos

The success rates traditionally for one or two level cervical fusion or cervical disc replacement are around 90% and some of the most successful surgery of all the surgery that’s performed.

Pain management for patients immediately after spine surgery, typically from my team, involves a multimodal approach, meaning we combine different medications to provide the maximum relief with the least risk, and try and avoid long any type of long-term opiate use as well.

I take care of a lot of tennis players. The twisting of tennis often aggravates the low back. Sometimes you can see associated neck and shoulder problems as well. Those patients typically start with physical therapy and routine medications for treatment, progress to injections, and then ultimately if we have to do surgery, review their surgical options and try and tailor the minimum surgery for them to get them back to doing the things they want to do.

What to expect after spine surgery varies a lot by patient and surgery performed. Generally if it’s outpatient surgery or surgery where you go home the same day, you will have pain, but it should be manageable with pain pills you can take by mouth. Patients that need hospitalization for bigger surgery, obviously have a little bit of a slow recovery and can expect pain in the hospital, which will be managed, either with pain medication by mouth or IV pain medication.

Most patients rehab is part of their recovery from spine surgery and as rehab progresses, patients tend to get more and more back to normal.

The risks and benefits of spine surgery share some of the common risks of any type of surgery, which is in general all the horrible things you can think of. You’re having surgery, anything can happen. The risks are generally very focused, depending upon the procedure is, for instance, your single biggest risk from cervical surgery is having difficulty swallowing for a couple days.