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Surgery in the neck, when performed from the front, and patients only need one or two levels, is one of the most successful surgeries of all surgeries performed. What that means is after a patient typically has a herniated disc in the neck that ultimately they need surgery for, if years later they get another herniated disc.

It’s very common for them, even though they were initially very scared about surgery, to want to proceed to surgery very quickly simply because it’s usually a quick outpatient procedure with a high success rate.

When I go about diagnosing a condition, it’s usually a systematic approach. First of all, assessing and talking to the patient. A lot of patients, you walk out into the room, you can tell exactly what’s wrong with them because certain patients with certain herniated discs will sit in very distinct ways. And you know, from the doorway that they have a herniated disc.

Usually the history gives you a good sense of what’s bothering the patient and where the source of the problem is. The valuation can assess beyond the physical exam, to different x-rays, CT scans, and ultimately, of course, probably the single best test as an MRI by.

One of the things I found very helpful if I have another patient in the office who’s recovering from a similar surgery to what I’m recommending to a patient and those two patients don’t mind, I’ll have them talk about what their experiences are.

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.