Osteoporosisis a disease that decreases bone quality. It is a silent condition that often goes unrecognized unless it leads to fractures. Due to this risk, appropriate screening is needed. If a fracture has occurred, it may require surgical treatment.
Spinal decompression is removal of pressure from the nerve structures in the spine. It may be achieved with or without surgery. Nonsurgical decompression may provide temporary relief of symptoms but if pain persists, surgical decompression may be needed.
I am an orthopedic spine surgeon. Quite often my patients ask what the difference is between my specialty and neurosurgery. Some people assume that all spine surgeons are neurosurgeons. So, is there a difference and if so, what is it?
These days spine surgery is performed by two separate specialties, orthopedic surgery and neurological surgery (neurosurgery). There is a trend for them to merge into one specialty called “spine surgery,” but it has not happened yet.
I regularly hear a question from my patients: “Do you perform laser surgery?” In fact, it happens so often, that I think it is reasonable to address this in a separate blog post.
The notion of lasers used in spine surgery is widespread these days.
Definition
Anterior lumbar interbody fusion is a surgical procedure done through the abdomen to remove a diseased intervertebral disc and replace it with a spacer, thus restoring the disc height, decompressing the nerves, correcting deformity and fusing the vertebrae together in the corrected position.
TLIF of Transforaminal Lumbar Interbody Fusion is a traditional open-surgical procedure aimed to remove pressure to the spinal nerves and provide stabilization of the spine bones (vertebrae) when there is abnormal motion between them.
TLIF is one of the most common procedures used to decompress and stabilize the spine.
