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• About Spinal Fusion

Important Information about Spinal Fusion

Spinal fusion is a serious surgery that is used to treat a variety of back and neck conditions, including degenerative disc disease. Only used as a last resort, spinal fusion surgery can result in significant and permanent changes to the structure of the neck and back, so this surgery should not be taken lightly.

Some medical professionals believe that spinal fusion surgery is necessary to strengthen weaknesses in the spinal column – weaknesses that are caused by injury, disease, aging, birth defects, and more. Furthermore, it is believed that since normal movement causes a lot of pain in some patients, relief is possible by immobilizing the damaged parts of the spine that are the epicenter of the pain.

Traditional degenerative disc disease surgery often involves some form of spinal fusion. A few techniques of spinal fusion surgery include:

• Removing damaged, diseased, and injured parts of the spine such as discs, vertebrae, etc.
• Placing grafted bone over the place where diseased bone and tissue was removed. Grafted bone may come from a donor site in your own body or from a cadaver, or a synthetic bone may be used.
• Using metal rods and plates to affix grafted bone permanently to surrounding vertebrae. This will cause the vertebrae to grow together, or "fuse" into one bone.

Since the goal of spinal fusion surgery is to reduce pain – and degenerative disc disease is a main cause of back and neck pain in the United States – spinal fusion is commonly used to treat this condition. As a matter of fact, hundreds of thousands of spinal fusion surgeries are performed every year, many of them to treat degenerative disc disease symptoms.

Like any major surgery, spinal fusion is not without risk. Possible complications of this surgery include infection, bleeding, problems with general anesthesia, and nerve damage. Furthermore, it is possible that even after going through this invasive surgery and its yearlong recuperation time, it still might not ease the pain of degenerative disc disease. Finally, spinal fusion has been known to put extra stress on surrounding areas of the spine, causing further damage and degeneration.

Click Here to see how you can get your life back in 5 days

If you are considering spinal fusion as a treatment for your back and neck pain, you should explore all the options available to you before making a final decision. Laser Spine Institute offers several innovative endoscopic procedures to treat degenerative disc disease and many other conditions, but without the risks of spinal fusion surgery. At LSI, all of our procedures are minimally invasive and are performed on an outpatient basis, which means you can walk away from the operating table and be back to your normal activities quickly. Please contact LSI today to learn more about our procedures and to receive a free MRI or CT scan review.

Please note: Laser Spine Institute currently does not perform endoscopic procedures on the thoracic spine.