The treatment of spinal stenosis in its early stages and when it is not yet fully developed is almost always conservative. The specialist in Traumatology establishes a mainly symptomatic medical guideline based on anti-inflammatory drugs, muscle relaxants and analgesics, combined with appropriate rehabilitation and a series of other important measures.
Some of these measures are, for example, wearing an orthopedic brace, reducing body weight and above all treating vertebral osteoporosis, which almost always coexists with degenerative osteoarthritis. This last factor is very important because osteoporosis causes spinal deviations to increase and, of course, pain to double.
In some cases, Radiofrequency (Rhizolysis) can be used as an adjuvant treatment at the level of the small joints to eliminate pain only. This treatment is also used when conservative measures are not sufficient to eliminate the pain and when symptoms derived from the stenosis begin to appear.
Some of these symptoms are sciatica, loss of strength in both upper and lower limbs, loss of sensation, cramps and tingling, difficulty in walking and sometimes the inability to bend or squat. All of them always appear when the patient is active, i.e. when he/she is standing, sitting or walking. When the patient lies down in bed, the symptoms improve significantly and this means that this person requires surgical treatment.
What is the surgical treatment of spinal stenosis?
Surgical treatment consists basically in performing an operation to decompress the medulla and the nerves coming out of it. This decompression is performed by removing all those elements that press on the nerves, proceeding to a recalibration of the spinal canal.
This type of operation is very delicate but very effective, and is usually performed by microsurgical technique, using the surgical microscope.
The spinal column is then restabilized by means of instruments such as vertebral fixators. These are prostheses with screws, which are attached to the vertebrae and joined together with titanium rods to maintain a rigid structure that prevents the vertebrae from dislocating.
To this is added a series of bone grafts taken from the vertebral bed itself and from the posterior iliac crest. These are placed on the treated vertebrae themselves and once they consolidate, they make the corrected deformities and narrowing never go back again. In this way a definitive result is achieved and that is for the patient’s whole life.