What to do if lumbar stenosis compresses the nerves? Surgery is required in these cases

Lumbar stenosis can cause pain in the waist and legs, as well as weakness in the hips and legs. If lumbar stenosis compresses the nerves, timely surgery is required so as not to affect your life. Close observation and scientific care are required after the operation to avoid complications.

1. Indications for Lumbar Stenosis Surgery:

(1) Those who experience back and leg pain after activities, which affects their daily life and work, and cannot be cured by conservative treatment.

(2) Progressive worsening of claudication or shortening of standing time.

(3) Those with obvious neurological impairment.

The purpose of surgery is to relieve compression of nerve tissue and blood vessels within the spinal canal, nerve root canal, or intervertebral foramen. Commonly used surgical methods include laminectomy and nerve root decompression.

2. Surgical treatment

If conservative treatment is ineffective for 3 months, the subjective symptoms are obvious and continue to worsen, affecting normal life and work; or there is obvious radicular pain and clear neurological damage, especially severe cauda equina damage; and progressive worsening of lumbar spondylolisthesis and scoliosis accompanied by corresponding clinical symptoms, then surgical treatment is required. Surgical treatment is decompression or both decompression and fusion, sometimes with stabilization by fixation. Complex lumbar spinal stenosis: In addition to the symptoms of lumbar spinal stenosis, it is also accompanied by lumbar degenerative scoliosis, intervertebral instability, degenerative slippage, intervertebral foraminal stenosis, etc. It is relatively complicated and requires comprehensive symptomatic treatment.

3. Postoperative complications

Surgery for lumbar spinal stenosis is a very mature surgery that has been tested on hundreds of thousands and millions of patients. But any operation carries certain risks, and lumbar spinal stenosis surgery is no exception. Surgery-related complications include intraoperative bleeding, vascular injury, dura mater injury, cauda equina injury, nerve root injury, etc. Systemic complications such as shock, deep vein thrombosis, dyspnea, lung infection and atelectasis, urinary tract infection, abdominal distension and vomiting may occur in the perioperative period after surgery. It is necessary to closely observe the condition, detect abnormalities in time, and give correct treatment quickly.