Performed through a small incision, with a working portal in the back of the spine less than the size of a thumbnail, very good results are obtained in carefully selected patients.
Mr Fagan has successfully performed hundreds of procedures in professional athletes, soldiers, people from all walks of life.
Mr Fagan writes:
It is a myth that this operation carries a high chance of back-pain afterwards.
Less than 5% of my own patients have this complication.90% are better with a speedy recovery and return to work within 2 weeks in some cases.
Patients must be carefully assessed however – patients with a genuine history of chronic back pain on top of their acute sciatica often do need a spinal fusion in addition to their discectomy.This also yields excellent results with an improvement in both.
The other group of patients that require a fusion are those with a slippage of one vertebra over another, called spondylolisthesis (to give it’s medical title).
Don’t forget though that sciatica causes a lot of acute back pain and spasm and this gets better once the nerve root is treated with disc fragmentectomy.
This acute back pain should not be mistaken for a chronic pain picture and does not require a spinal fusion or lumbar inter-body fusion.
