Back pain is called chronic if it lasts for a period ofthree months or longer. It can continuouslycome and go, often bringing temporary relief to the patient.Struggling with chronic back pain can be especially challenging if you do not know the cause behind it.
Some cases of chronic back pain might occur due to any specific injury which was healed a long time back– for example, a serious infection, a surgical incision, or an injury. Other cases have no seeming cause – no priorinfection or injury and alsoan absence of underlying tissue damage.
However, many cases of chronic pain are linked to the following conditions:
- Arthritis, especially osteoarthritis
- Nerve damage (neuropathy)
- Low back pain
- Headaches
- Fibromyalgia
- Shingles
- Multiple sclerosis
Treating your underlying condition isimmenselyimportant, however; that does not ofteneliminate the chronic pain. Usually, doctors treat chronic painas a condition of its own, demanding pain treatment that ensuresthat the patient’s physical as well as psychological health is improved.
Common Causes of Chronic Back Pain
Even though chronic back pain is mostlyrelated to the age factor, it can sometimes also result from a prior injury. Apart from this, the other most common causes of chronic back pain include:
- Spinal Stenosis: It refers to narrowing of the spinal canal that causes pain in the nerves
- Arthritis of the Spine: It refers to the gradual thinning of the cartilage present inside the spine
- Myofascial Pain Syndrome: It is an unexplained muscle pain along with tenderness
- Disc Problems: This includes herniated or bulging disc
Spinal fusion – Asurgery that joins two or more vertebrae into one single standalone structure. It takes place to stop the motion at a painful vertebral segment, which decreases the pain producedby the joint.
There are various approaches to spinal fusion surgery, and all of them include the following process:
- Additionof bone graft to a segment of the spine.
- Setting up a biological response that makes the bone graft to grow between the two vertebral elements which create a bone fusion.
- The boney fusion –in which one fixed bone replaces a mobile joint –helps in stopping the motion at that joint segment.
How Spinal Fusion Works
Each level in the spine has a disc space in the front along with paired facet joints in the back. Together, these structures work towards defining a motion segment while alsoallowing multiple degrees of motion.
A spine fusion surgery uses the bone graft to cause two vertebral bodies to grow together and form one long bone. Bone graft can either be extracted from theperson’s hip (autograft bone) at the time of the spine fusion surgery, manufactured (synthetic bone graft substitute), or harvested from cadaver bone (allograft bone).
Apart from the various choices about which bone graft to choose, and which or how many levels to fuse, there exist many types of spinal fusion, along with fusions with surgical approaches from the front, back, both front and back, and/or from the side.
Why You Need This Surgery
If medication, physical therapy, and other treatments have not helped in healing chronic back pain, this surgery might be an option.
You will need a spinal fusion surgery if your back pain is caused byany of the following:
- Degenerative disk disease
- Fracture
- Scoliosis — your spine curves abnormally to one side
- Spinal stenosis
- Spondylolisthesis
- Tumors or spine infection
Doctors generally recommend spine fusion surgery if they are aware of what is causing the problem. So, if you are looking to get a spine surgery in Delhi, you should opt for hospitals like Max Healthcare, which is the best spine hospital in Delhi.
For a chronic back pain, a thorough diagnosis is essentialin order to get the appropriate treatment and rehabilitation. The surgerydecreases the possibility of recurrent back pain flare-ups and helps in preventing the development of the chronic back pain.
