Moving Away from Fusion by Treating the Pain Generator: The Secrets of an Endoscopic Master

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• Create Date December 2, 2015
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What We Know

• Chronic back pain afflicts hundreds of millions of people worldwide
• The most common early cause is deterioration of the intervertebral disc from trauma or aging
• Current therapies to treat back pain from nonsurgical techniques (ie. Physical medicine + pain management and oral analgesics) are followed by various techniques of MIS and traditional disc surgery, but PREMATURELY ending in fusion.

There are viable minimally invasive technologies and minimally invasive surgical procedures that make it feasible to move away from fusion as an early surgical option for treating chronic low back pain if non-surgical methods fail. Surgeons who are familiar with and who have training in endoscopic spine surgery are able to utilize the transforaminal endoscopic approach to the lumbar spine and use these endoscopic techniques to identify and treat the pain generators with the least invasive, most effective methods available.