What Can One Expect During Total Disc Replacement Surgery?

As spinal discs deteriorate, they could become excruciatingly painful, restricting function and lowering an individual’s quality of life. Lumbar total disc replacement (TDR, sometimes referred to as artificial disc) surgery is a breakthrough in spine surgery. This procedure is advised only when non-surgical treatments have failed to offer considerable pain relief.

The TDR procedure is most frequently used to address severe disc degeneration or displacement. The procedure’s objective is to alleviate back discomfort while preserving more natural motion that would be possible with other operations, like spinal fusion.

The lumbar total disc replacement procedure’s purpose

The procedure entails removing the deteriorated and uncomfortable disc, alleviating back pain, and restoring the spine’s mobility using an artificial disc. The three-piece prosthesis comprises two titanium-coated cobalt-chromium-molybdenum plates connected to the vertebrae through a keel. Between the two metal plates is a polyethylene core that allows for spinal movement.

What can a patient expect when a lumbar disc is replaced?

A bone analysis will be performed in preparation for lumbar total disc replacement. This is straightforward research in which a non-ionizing scanning counter is passed over your physique to determine the amount of calcium in your bones. You will have routine preoperative blood tests to ensure there is no sign of infection. A tiny cut will be made down and up across the front of the lower belly during surgery. The surgeons do not enter the stomach during the surgery; rather, they enter the stomach wall and drag the sack that contains your organs around the front of the spinal cord. Many people believe that surgeons enter the stomach and must relocate all of the organs. Indeed, no muscles are severed, and the surgeons adhere to the body’s natural tissue plains.

As a result, most individuals are discharged the day after surgery after the surgeon extracts the damaged disc and replaces it with a custom-made artificial disc with the correct size, height, and angle. It is conditional on the reintroduction of bowel noises. Occasionally, the bowels may not resume their normal peristalsis or squeezing action immediately following surgery, necessitating an additional day in the hospital. In general, individuals are up and moving the day following surgery and are frequently discharged the next day. They wear a tiny corset for two weeks to aid the healing process and then visit their doctor to begin physical therapy.

They are only restricted from arching their backs backward and from jogging, which results in impact stress and may damage the minute micro connections between both the bones and the prosthesis. After three months, the patient is allowed to resume normal activities but can return to non-labouring work after two weeks. In many respects, recovery after an artificial disc is comparable to that of a microdiscectomy, a small cut in the back of the spinal cord used to remove a herniated soft disc. Patients with artificial discs recover similarly to those with natural discs due to the least invasive method, which doctors refer to as a retroperitoneal approach.

Before recommending back surgery, doctors usually advise patients to explore conservative, non-surgical treatments first. Most physicians recommend a three-month time frame for these procedures since many back problems improve on their own after that period. If you’ve exhausted non-surgical options and continue to have back discomfort, you may wish to discuss surgery with your doctor. Competent surgeons will painstakingly design and perform the procedure if an operation is the appropriate course of action following non-surgical therapy.