Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) affects about 11% of older adults in the United States, placing many of them in a good deal of discomfort. From not being able to stand up straight to being limited to only short distances because of debilitating back and leg pain, LSS can greatly shrink your world.
If you’ve tried injections and physical therapy for your LSS to no avail, it might be time to explore other options, such as the innovative mild® procedure.
Here at Bux Pain Management, Dr. Anjum Bux and our team specialize in the many conditions that lead to back pain, and LSS is one of the most common. One of the reasons we recommend the mild procedure is that this approach doesn’t simply address the symptoms but also the underlying problem for long-term results. Here’s how.
Understand spinal stenosis
To appreciate how the mild procedure works, we should first recap what we’re up against with spinal stenosis. LSS isn’t a disease but a condition resulting from other issues.
At its core, LSS describes a narrowing in your spinal canal that can compress sensitive nerves and lead to lower back pain and symptoms that radiate into your legs, such as pain, numbness, tingling, and weakness.
There isn’t any single condition that leads to this narrowing, but several possibilities, including:
- Facet joint arthritis
- Degenerative changes (spondylosis)
- Degenerative disc disease
- Thickening in your ligaments
While interventional therapies such as facet joint injections work well to quiet the overactive nerve signaling, these injections don’t correct the underlying stenosis (narrowing).
Mild to the rescue
The mild procedure is a minimally invasive surgical technique in which we remove excess ligament and bone tissue to free up space in your spinal canal and decompress your nerves.
Outside of addressing the underlying cause of your LSS symptoms to bring you lasting relief, the mild procedure offers other benefits:
Minimally invasive
As we mentioned, the mild procedure is minimally invasive as we only need to make a very small incision to remove the ligament and bone tissues.
In and out
We perform the mild procedure in about an hour on an outpatient basis, which means you’re free to return home afterward.
Quick recovery
Since the incision is so small, about the size of an aspirin, there’s far less healing time than more invasive open-back surgery.
Short on complications, long on success
The mild procedure has an enviably low complication rate of less than 0.1%. Better still, the procedure can produce life-changing results, such as increasing standing time from 8 minutes to almost an hour (56 minutes).
For even better results, we can often combine the mild procedure with Vertiflex™, a device we place between your vertebrae to create more space and reduce nerve compression.
If you’re struggling with LSS and more conservative treatments aren’t making a significant difference, it may be time to explore mild.
To learn more about your treatment options for LSS, including mild and Vertiflex, please contact one of our four offices in Lexington, Cynthiana, Maysville, or Danville, Kentucky.
