Back Pain Due to Damaged Discs: What Are My Options?

Millions of Americans struggle with back pain, as nearly 40% of adults in the United States report experiencing the problem. While there are many roads to back pain, some of the more frustrating are degenerative issues that get progressively worse, such as degenerative disc disease, which affects most people over the age of 40. 

If you’re wondering what your options are for damaged discs that are causing you no small amount of discomfort, you’ve come to the right place. Neurosurgeon Dr. Ali H. Mesiwala is a leading expert in the field of spine health and, along with his team, wants to share some excellent treatment options here.

How discs become damaged

For the sake of this discussion, we’re going to refer to damaged discs as part of a larger degenerative disc disease (DDD) issue. While the term “disease” is included in the name, it refers only to the ongoing nature of the wear and tear on the discs. DDD is not gender, age, sex, ethnic specific. 

Each of the 23 intervertebral discs in your spine features a tough outer layer called the annulus fibrosus, which houses a jelly-like substance called the nucleus pulposus. This allows your discs to act as spacers and cushions between the bony vertebrae in your spine.

Over time, your discs can degenerate and lose moisture, making them flatter and more brittle; at which point they start to bulge. That bulge pushes into the spinal canal and can compress spinal nerves.  When this happens, you’re more at risk for painful back issues, including:

• Herniated discs (typically associated with traumatic events) 
• Spinal stenosis (tightening of the space around the spinal canal) 
• Spondylolisthesis (slipping of the vertebrae) 
• Adult scoliosis (multiple discs that are degenerated causing an abnormal curve) 
• Arthritis (specifically of the spine) 

The two most commonly affected parts of the psine are the cervical (neck) and lumbar (low back regions). These are the mobile parts of your spine and as a result the physical strain on the discs is greater. This wear and tear nature of the discs ultimately causes irritation of the nerves that go into our arms and legs, respectively, and affect patients regarding pain, sensation, and sometimes even motor function. Patients ultimately seek treatment as it affects their lifestyle on a day to day basis in varying degrees of severity. 

Treating damaged discs

There are several options for treating symptoms arising from  damaged discs and our recommendations will depend on the extent of the damage and your symptoms.

In the early stages of symptomatic DDD, we might suggest more conservative treatments, such as physical therapy to strengthen the muscles in your neck and back to provide extra support to the spine. In certain instances you may be referred to a pain management specialist to under go injections to help calm the nerve(s) down. 

To keep you more comfortable as you work on these efforts, you can try targeted steroid injections, anti-inflammatory medications, and radiofrequency ablation.

If these conservative efforts fail to bring you relief and don’t slow or halt the degeneration, we may have to get more aggressive with spine surgery, such as:

• Microdiscectomy to repair a herniated disc
• Nerve decompression through a laminectomy, laminotomy, or foraminotomy
• Artificial disc replacement
• Spinal fusion, in which we remove the damaged disc and fuse the vertebrae together
• Managing pain with neuromodulation in the form of spinal cord stimulation

At our practice, we’ve had great success with this final one — artificial disc replacement. The reason we like this approach is that it can relieve your pain without altering your spine too much. When a disc is removed and the vertebrae fused together, you not only lose some height in your spine, you can also experience more disc damage on either end of the fusion.

With artificial disc replacement, Dr. Mesiwala removes your damaged disc and replaces it with an artificial one that integrates into your spine and functions like any disc would - thus ensuring continued motion at that particular segment. 

As you can see, there are plenty of options for dealing with DDD in your spine. To figure out which one would work best for your damaged discs, contact one of our offices in Newport Beach, Marina del Rey, or Rancho Cucamonga, California, to set up a consultation with Dr. Mesiwala.