How is Lumbar Spondylosis treated? - Dr. Kodlady Surendra Shetty

Lumbar Spondylosis this is a weak terminology anything in lumbar like disc degeneration, disc prolapse or disc bulge we call it as a Spondylosis. This is a common man technology not a medical terminology. If you have a lumbar disc problem we can treat it by bed rest or through physiotherapy in the form of traction or decompression or by a surgery in the case of excessive pain, not able to heal through physiotherapy. When a disc is degenerated or weak when we take an x-ray suppose there is movement of bone not disc alone this stage is called instability or listasis in such cases we have to stabilize the segment or inter body cages by putting the screws there and fuse the segment. When there is an instability if you don't fuse it we can only do disc removal surgery there is a chance that patient treatment will go wrong and the situation gets worse. So that is why per-operative evaluation is very important and decide whether the patient needs physiotherapy alone or he needs a disc surgery or fusion surgery so we have to see to various aspects. Sometime we can take a standing MRI, definitely we have to take standing x-rays, bending forward or backward x-ray. Doing all this and conclude whether he needs a simpler surgery or discetomy or much more complicated surgery like a fusion surgery.