What To Do With Lumbar Spinal Stenosis?

What a good question! Spine surgeons are not sure what is best for spinal stenosis, still conservative care is gathering more and more attention in the medical research! Rethwill Chiropractic Clinic gives non-surgical care that is quite soothing to Eugene spinal stenosis sufferers. Our patients at Eugene with spinal stenosis come to Rethwill Chiropractic Clinic will find our care gentle and comfortable and praise the research and guidelines backing its administration.

 

You may be thinking, “what is spinal stenosis?”. Spinal stenosis is what happens when the spinal canal area is narrowed. In particular lumbar spinal stenosis happens as we age for many of us when degeneration of the spine occurs. One reason this happens may be due to how the spinal elements were constructed from the beginning. (Some people are born with narrow spinal canals.) It could also be a disc herniation that is inserting itself into the spinal canal, taking up the space that is meant for the spinal nerves. Regardless of the cause, spinal stenosis’ narrowing creates pain.

 

Often when a surgeon sees that a patient has spinal stenosis they will offer surgical choices to enlarge that narrowed space. There are many paths from which one may pick. One procedure is decompressive surgery. It is cost-effective for lumbar spinal stenosis, but surgical and conservative treatment approaches result in comparable quality of life at one year follow up. (1) Spinal stenosis can also be fought with spinal fusion. A Cochrane Database Review, a big deal in the world of research, reports that there is no significant difference at 6 months and 12 months post spine surgery for lumbar spinal stenosis. Cochrane pulled from 12,966 citations to conclude further that they have very little confidence to determine whether surgical or conservative care is better for lumbar spinal stenosis. They, therefore, offer no new clinical practice recommendations for doctors to follow. They do emphasize though that side-effects from surgery range from 10% to 24% and side effects from conservative care, 0%. There were no side effects from conservative care for lumbar spine stenosis in their review. Further, they report that there were no clear benefits seen with surgery versus no surgery. They warn clinicians to carefully inform patients about possible treatment options “especially given that conservative treatment options have results in no reported side effects.” (2)

 

Chiropractors like yours at Rethwill Chiropractic Clinic diagnose spinal stenosis and give chiropractic care and spinal manipulation to conservatively relieve the pain of spinal stenosis. Rethwill Chiropractic Clinic is the place for Eugene conservative care of back pain. Rethwill Chiropractic Clinic uses the Cox Technic system of spinal manipulation to open the spinal canal area by 28%, allowing the nerves to breathe, and drop intradiscal pressures to as low as -192mmHg. (3,4)

 

When lumbar spinal stenosis is causing you pain, contact Rethwill Chiropractic Clinic, the Eugene chiropractic practice for gentle relief of back pain. Rethwill Chiropractic Clinic chiropractic care at Eugene may definitely be the answer to the question of “how to alleviate my pain from spinal stenosis?” for you!