Medical Technology Blog

Topic: Spine

What a learning experience it has been going through back surgery. I thought I was pretty well edjucated on the subject going into this experience. I will be posting my list of what I went through as I know so many people who are ailing with back surgery. Like me they have tried everything but surgery since most of us are worried about the outcome of back surgery. As my previous posts described, I had a microdiscetomy , I also learned I had a laminectomy. Now we have a new word of the day. All of this was done to clean up the area of my back in the L4 - L5 region of my back (L = Lumbar). One of my issues was a very friendly herniated disc was pushing on a sciatic nerve plus some bony spurs that needed to be removed.

Medical Word of the Day: Laminectomy:

A laminectomy is a surgical procedure in which the surgeon removes a portion of the bony arch, or lamina, on the dorsal surface of a vertebra, which is one of the bones that make up the human spinal column. It is done to relieve back pain that has not been helped by more conservative treatments. In most cases a laminectomy is an elective procedure rather than emergency surgery. A laminectomy for relief of pain in the lower back is called a lumbar laminectomy or an open decompression.

The following are a couple of images showing the nerves pitched and an image of removing part of the spine to make room for the nerve.

title=’Lumbar Stenosis Surgery Image’>