For people with severe disc-related back pain and sciatica, long-term relief can be hard to come by and the treatment options often come down to spinal decompression or back surgery. Each treatment option has its pros and cons, but in the end, the best option will depend on a variety of factors that are unique to each case.

Unfortunately, there are several misconceptions concerning both spinal decompression and back surgery that can make it very difficult for one to choose a treatment approach, particularly when one’s judgement may be clouded by pain and/or pain medication. The purpose of this article is to attempt to cut through some of the myths and misconceptions concerning these forms of disc treatment to assist disc pain sufferers in making an informed decision as to the form of treatment to pursue.

Spinal decompression is an advanced form of traction, but it has very different effects on the spinal discs than regular traction. Due to computer-controlled motors, true spinal decompression systems can “trick” the muscles along the spine into staying relaxed during treatment, allowing for the creation of a suction force within the disc that pulls bulging disc material back inward and also enhances disc hydration and nutrition that will subsequently promote disc healing. Because regular traction systems must fight the muscles, there is far less of an effect on the disc, and regular traction is usually insufficient to produce any long-term relief of disc-related pain.

While spinal decompression is highly successful in treating most cases of disc-related pain, it is not 100% effective and there are situations in which it is contraindicated. In my San Antonio Spinal Decompression practice, it has been my experience that it is usually not very effective when a patient has a severe disc extrusion, or a full rupture of the disc, rather than just bulging. Spinal decompression is not safe to use when the patient has spinal instability in the are of the damaged disc. In cases where spinal decompression is unlikely to be effective and/or is contraindicated, surgery becomes the only real option for achieving good lasting results.

Although it may be the best option in a small number of disc-pain cases, back surgery is far from being an ideal solution. Patients sometimes have the impression that a back surgery will completely solve their back pain once and for all, but this is rarely the case. Statistics have shown that a prior back surgery is one of the most telling predictors of whether a person will need back surgery in the future. Even though an aggressive back surgery to remove a damaged disc will ensure that the removed disc will never cause a problem again, such a surgery will typically create future problems that can be as bad or worse than the initial disc problem.

Post-surgical scar tissue and increased wear and tear on adjacent discs can conspire to create new areas of spinal cord and/or spinal nerve compression months or years after spinal surgery. For this reason, it is my opinion that spinal surgery should be reserved as a last resort when all other treatments (including spinal decompression) have failed or have otherwise been ruled out.