Suffering From Lower Back Pain? Anders Cohen Performs Minimally Invasive Lumbar Discectomy

Anders Cohen offers relief to those struggling with such problems as moderate to severe leg pain, foot and leg numbness or weakness, and/or curtailed bladder and bowel function. Said problems may be symptomatic of a condition known as nerve root compression.

A damaged or diseased intervertebral disc, a spur or spurs of bones in the lower back, or a tumor can cause nerve root compression. As a result of the disease and/or damage or the presence of these spur/s or tumor/s, a certain amount of pressure is placed on the roots of these nerves, or on the spinal cord itself. This pressure can result in the aforementioned symptoms.

To treat diseased or herniated discs or bone spurs, many surgeons have commonly turned to older discectomy procedures, and successfully eliminated the symptoms. That said, though, such methods have required both surgeons and patients to deal with a certain amount of risk, as most of the said procedures are extremely invasive. These methods go by the term “open spine surgery”, and in a nutshell, they require muscles to be stripped or cut from the spine for surgeons to access the bone spurs and/or damaged discs – a tedious and risky process that can take quite some time to recover from.

Thankfully, Anders Cohen and other surgeons can now perform a minimally invasive form of lumbar discectomy. In this procedure, the patient is positioned on his or her stomach, and a small incision is made along the spine and the spinal muscles in the area are gently separated or dilated. Next, an instrument called a tubular dilator is inserted to create a clear space for the surgeon to work in. The surgeon can then deal with the cause of the compression. Afterwards, the incision will be closed and typically lead to minimal scarring. Finally, the patient will go through a recovery period that is both faster and less painful, compared to the downtime associated with extremely invasive surgery.

This procedure is just one of the specialties of Dr. Anders Cohen.