What a great question! Spine surgeons are not positive the best treatment plan for spinal stenosis, after all conservative care is receiving more and more attention in the medical research! Johnson Chiropractic provides non-surgical care that eases discomfort for Richmond spinal stenosis sufferers. Richmond patients suffering from spinal stenosis know come to Johnson Chiropractic will find our care gentle and comfortable and commend the research and guidelines that make up its administration.

 

You may be thinking, “what is spinal stenosis?”. Spinal stenosis is the narrowing of the spinal canal area. Lumbar spinal stenosis comes with age for a good deal of us when degeneration of the spine occurs. It may be due to how the spinal elements were formed originally. (In some cases people are born with narrow spinal canals.) Likewise spinal stenosis can be the repercussion of a disc herniation that is injecting itself into the spinal canal, taking up the space that is supposed to be for the spinal nerves. Whatever the cause, spinal stenosis’ narrowing causes pain.

 

When surgeons discover spinal stenosis in a patient they often give surgical options to open that narrowed space. There are many paths from which a patient may take. One choice 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)

 

Your Richmond chiropractor at Johnson Chiropractic sees spinal stenosis and gives chiropractic care and spinal manipulation to conservatively relieve the pain of spinal stenosis. Johnson Chiropractic is the location for Richmond conservative care of back pain. Johnson Chiropractic 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)

 

If you suffer from pain due to lumbar spinal stenosis, call Johnson Chiropractic, the Richmond chiropractic practice for gentle relief of back pain. Johnson Chiropractic chiropractic care at Richmond may definitely be the answer to the question of “what to do with spinal stenosis?” for you!