Spinal Fusion Surgery and Its Advantage
When a spine specialist recommends a spinal fusion surgery for a felt and chronic back pain, it is, basically, to stop the constant and painful movements of two bone vertebrae clashing against each other, affecting nearby nerves, ligaments, and even muscles, thus causing so much discomfort, such that with spinal fusion surgery, the two bone vertebrae will be fused by joining two or more vertebrae into one single structure, so that they will be prevented from moving like they used to. Generally, there are many causes that can are reasons for producing an uncomfortable back pain that is chronically felt and spinal surgeons need to determine accurately which among these causes is the main situation happening in the spinal column of the patient, before a spinal fusion surgery will be recommended; therefore, it would be good for the patient concerned to have a general knowledge of what these spinal causes are, such as the possibility of any of these: scoliosis, which is a genetic abnormality of the spinal column growing more on one side instead of on a straightforward direction; a degenerative spinal disease which results into the narrowing of the space between the spinal disks which can effect into a painful rubbing of the bones; a spine tumor; a narrowing of the spinal canal called spinal stenosis; or the abnormal shift of the spinal disk known as spondylolisthesis.
Spinal fusion surgery is a delicate form of surgery and must be performed by an experienced and trained spinal specialist and, in this connection, there are two ways for a spinal surgeon to perform the surgery: one, by way of operating through the belly, anterior lumbar inter-body fusion, and the other, by way of posterior fusion, which is operating directly from the back, thus when the surgeon has thoroughly discussed the manner of surgery to the patient, after incision, he sets aside to the side part the muscles and other organs to go further down and see and inspect the spine and starts removing the joints found between the damaged spinal disks and replaces these with any of the following methods: using screws, rods, or bone graft which is taken from either the hip or pelvis and, at the same time, inserts a bone morphogenetic protein to stimulate bone growth of the newly-replaced joints. Knowing that in every surgery there is bound to be a risk, surgeons will need to explain the possible risks to their patients, which are bleeding, blood clots, infection, pain, risk from anesthesia, and other potential problems, like nerve injury resulting into numbness; if it is a bone donor, complications such as tissue rejection and infection may set in; and the worst could be if the spinal fusion does not work and the back pain may return.