What To Do With Lumbar Spinal Stenosis?

Good question! Spine surgeons are not certain what is best for spinal stenosis, yet conservative care is gathering more and more attention in the medical research! Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc offers non-surgical care that alleviates pain for Fort Wayne spinal stenosis sufferers. Our patients at Fort Wayne who have spinal stenosis come to Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc will find our care gentle and comfortable and praise the research and procedures backing its administration.

 

So what exactly is spinal stenosis? Spinal stenosis is the result of narrowing in the spinal canal area. For many of us lumbar spinal stenosis occurs with age when deterioration of the spine develops. This may have to do with how the spinal elements originally developed at birth. (Sometimes people are born with narrow spinal canals.) Likewise spinal stenosis can be the effect of a disc herniation that is injecting itself into the spinal canal, taking up the space that is meant for the spinal nerves. No matter the cause, spinal stenosis’ narrowing causes pain.

 

When surgeons discover spinal stenosis in a patient they often offer surgical choices to widen that narrowed space. There are many procedures from which you may take. Decompressive surgery is one such procedure.. It is cost-effective for lumbar spinal stenosis, but surgical and conservative treatment approaches result in comparable quality of life at one year follow up. (1) Spinal stenosis can also be battled with spinal fusion. A Cochrane Database Review, a big deal in the world of research, reports that there is no significant difference at 6 months and 12 months post spine surgery for lumbar spinal stenosis. Cochrane pulled from 12,966 citations to conclude further that they have very little confidence to determine whether surgical or conservative care is better for lumbar spinal stenosis. They, therefore, offer no new clinical practice recommendations for doctors to follow. They do emphasize though that side-effects from surgery range from 10% to 24% and side effects from conservative care, 0%. There were no side effects from conservative care for lumbar spine stenosis in their review. Further, they report that there were no clear benefits seen with surgery versus no surgery. They warn clinicians to carefully inform patients about possible treatment options “especially given that conservative treatment options have results in no reported side effects.” (2)

 

Chiropractors like yours at Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc see spinal stenosis and treat it with chiropractic care and spinal manipulation to conservatively relieve the pain of spinal stenosis. Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc is the locale for Fort Wayne conservative care of back pain. Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc uses the Cox Technic system of spinal manipulation to open the spinal canal area by 28%, allowing the nerves to breathe, and drop intradiscal pressures to as low as -192mmHg. (3,4)

 

For relief of pain due to lumbar spinal stenosis, call Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc, the Fort Wayne chiropractic practice for gentle relief of back pain. Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc chiropractic care at Fort Wayne may well be the answer to the question of “what can I do about my spinal stenosis?” for you!