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If conservative treatment methods have failed you and you are still looking for relief, an anterior cervical discectomy may help to relieve your chronic neck pain.
Beginning at the base of your skull and supporting the full weight of your head, the cervical spine allows for the spinal cord to run from your brain down through the cervical spine. There are seven vertebrae in the cervical spine and between each of these are soft pads or discs. These discs act as shock absorbers and allow the spine to be able to flex.
If you suffer from pain in your arms and neck you are not alone. There are millions of people like you that feel this pain daily. Herniated or ruptured discs are one of the most common causes of cervical pain. Pain is felt for a bulging or herniated disc when the tough outer layer of the disc tears and the soft inner material bulges out putting pressure on surrounding nerves. There is a multitude of reasons why this happens, including, wear and tear, aging, and sometimes traumatic injury.
Cervical neck pain can often be treated with conservative methods and often does not require surgery, but if the patient does not react to these treatments a spine specialist may be recommended and surgery may be discusses. Surgery for cervical bones spurs is sometimes called neck spurs surgery.
Anterior cervical discectomy
This is one of the more common forms of neck surgery and is used to treat damaged cervical discs. When a ruptured disc or bone spur is placing pressure on the nerve roots or spinal cord an anterior cervical discectomy may be preformed to remove the offender and relieve the pressure it is causing.
If a disc is removed during surgery sometimes the space between the vertebrae is left empty but often the surgeon may chose to place a bone graft in this area in order to maintain the normal height of the disc space.
If a bone graft is chosen it will most often come from the patient’s hip or a bone bank. The process is called a cervical spinal fusion and it will usually take the body’s natural healing process a few months to a year to “fuse” the bone.
Foraminotomy
This minimally invasive procedure uses an arthroscopic approach to open up the foramen without the need of any general anesthesia. Because of this, the procedure can be performed in an outpatient surgical setting.
When nerves are being compressed by the intervertebral foramen a foraminotomy can be performed to relieve the pressure in this space, freeing the nerve roots that exit the spinal canal. The word foraminotomy is derived from the Latin words foramen and otomy.
Foramen - Hole, opening, aperture
Otomy - Act of cutting, incision
In cases where the foramen is being compressed by bone, disc, scar tissue, or excessive ligament development resulting in a pinched nerve a foraminotomy can be performed to relieve these nerve root compression symptoms.
Patients who undergo this procedure only require one to two hours of monitoring, after which they are allowed to leave with a as long as they have a companion with them.