Procedures

Lumbar Fusion

Spinal fusion surgery is designed to stop the motion at a painful vertebral segment, which should decrease the pain generated from the joint. All lumbar spinal fusion surgery involves adding bone graft to an area of the spine. This sets up a biological response causing the bone graft to grow between two vertebral elements, thereby stopping the motion at that segment.

Abnormal and excessive motion at a vertebral segment may result in pain for patients with degenerative disc disease as well as isthmus, degenerative or orpostlaminectomy spondylolisthesis. Other conditions that may be treated by spinal fusion surgery include a weak or unstable spine (caused by infections or tumors), fractures, scoliosis or deformity.

HOW REVISION SPINAL SURGERY WORKS

At each level of the spine, there is a disc space in the front and paired facet joints in the back. Working together, these structures define a motion segment and permit multiple degrees of motion.

A spine fusion surgery involves using bone grafts to cause two vertebral bodies to grow together into one long bone. This is known as a one-level spine fusion. Bone graft can be taken from the patient’s hip (autograft bone) during the spine fusion surgery or harvested from cadaver bone (allograft bone). Synthetic bone graft substitutes are also in development and one bone type called morphogenic proteins (which helps the body create bone) is currently being used for certain fusion procedures.

In general, a lumbar spinal fusion surgery is most effective for conditions involving only one vertebral segment. Most patients will not notice any limitation in motion after a one-level spine fusion. Only in rare cases should a three-level (or more) fusion surgery be considered for pain alone—although it may be necessary in cases of scoliosis and lumbar deformity.

When necessary, fusing two segments of the spine may be a reasonable option for treatment of pain. However, spinal fusion of more than two segments is unlikely to provide pain relief because it eliminates too much of the normal motion in the lower back and places too much stress across the remaining joints.