Alternative Treatment Options

Conservative Treatment

If your symptoms are mild or intermittent and can be controlled through medication and an acceptable change in your lifestyle, this is often worth pursuing. This may be appropriate even with more troublesome symptoms if you have other significant medical problems.

Lumbar Epidural

An epidural injection of steroid and local anaesthetic can be helpful in the early stages, reducing some of the inflammatory changes affecting the nerve root and thus helping your symptoms to settle.

Decompression with Dynamic Stabilization

If there is a degree of instability of the spine at the level of your stenosis this may be best addressed by combining decompression with some form of dynamic stabilization. This may either be with an interspinous device such as the Wallis® Stabilization or, if a more extensive decompression is required, the stabilization may be achieved with pedicle screws and flexible rods. These techniques have several advantages. The stabilization should help with any back pain coming from that level of you spine and will also help to open out and protect the space for the nerve roots as they leave the spine (the neural formina). The techniques can also provide stability at that level without transferring stress to other levels in the spine. (See Wallis® Stabilization, Dynamic Stabilization with Flexible Rods)

Decompression and Instrumented Spinal Fusion

On occasions the situation in the spine may be such that a spinal decompression combined with fixation and fusion with screws and rods is the safest and most reliable option. This might be the case, for example, where one vertebra has slipped forwards very markedly on the one below, or where there is a marked curvature or tilt in the spine.
(See Posterior Spinal Fusion)

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