Back surgery is a procedure that aims to change a patient’s anatomy, such as removing a herniated disc that is causing pain, with the purpose of providing pain relief. Back surgeries vary, with some procedures minimally invasive and allowing for quick recovery and others more extensive and requiring longer recoveries. Lumbar laminectomy and microdiscectomy are just a couple of back surgery examples.
Back surgery may be reasonable for patients whose pain has not diminished after several months of non-surgical treatments, of course when an anatomical lesion has been identified as the source of pain. If no such lesion has been identified, back surgery is not an option, nor is back surgery ever performed to investigate possible causes of pain.
