The URMC Spine Center

Surgical Treatment

What to Expect When Surgery is the Solution

90% of patients with back and neck problems will improve significantly without surgery. However, when non-surgical methods prove unhelpful, surgery may be your best alternative. The URMC Spine Center has an expert team of orthopaedic surgeons who perform a full range of surgical procedures.

Before surgery, each patient meets with a surgeon to explore all options, discuss pre-operative and post-operative procedures and any questions or concerns.

Spinal Procedures

• Diskectomy involves the removal of a portion of a disk to relieve pressure on a nerve. It can be done as an endoscopic discectomy (or percutaneous arthroscopic diskectomy), a microdiscectomy or an open diskectomy. An incision is made, and the herniated disk and any loose pieces are removed. Ideally, just the fragment of disk that is pinching the nerve will be removed, leaving some of the disk intact.
• Laminotomy and laminectomy involve removing a small amount of the bone over the spinal canal (lamina) to eliminate a source of compression on the spinal cord or nerve root in any part of the back. This source of compression may be part of a herniated disk, vertebra fragment, spinal cord tumor, aneurysm, narrowing of the spinal canal (spinal stenosis) or rough protrusion of bone called a bone spur. During a laminotomy just a portion of lamina is removed to, relieve pressure on a nerve or allow the surgeon access to a disk that's pressing on a nerve. A laminectomy involves removal of the entire lamina.
• Foraminotomy and foraminectomy are commonly done to treat narrowing of the spinal canal (spinal stenosis), lateral disk herniations or facet arthritis. The foramen is the space in the vertebrae where the nerve roots exit on their path to a specific tissue or organ. In both surgeries, this opening is expanded by removing bone and soft tissue to provide more space for the exiting nerve roots. When surgery involves removing a large amount of bone and other tissue, it is called a foraminectomy.