What kind of doctor treats stenosis of the spine

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, you should schedule a consultation at AICA Orthopedics right away. Letting any of these symptoms linger or worsen can have a detrimental impact on your body and overall health. Our recommended treatment will depend on the severity and location of your spinal stenosis. Give us a call or schedule an appointment with our experienced staff of professional doctors and healthcare specialists so we can provide you with the best treatment options for spinal stenosis and its symptoms.

Our healthcare team at AICA Orthopedics will help you find relief from spinal stenosis through personalized attention and treatment. Treatment from a chiropractor can help to alleviate pain and discomfort symptoms associated with spinal stenosis.

As a field that focuses on the spine, chiropractic is often a perfect candidate for people experiencing spinal stenosis symptoms. Chiropractors from AICA Orthopedics will help in alleviating symptoms by carefully realigning the spine, which alleviates pressure on the spine, particularly with people suffering from spinal stenosis.

Neurologists specialize in disorders and issues related to the nervous system, including the spine. In some cases, surgery or minimally invasive procedures may be required to alleviate spinal stenosis symptoms. This is usually a final step after other treatment methods have been attempted with no improvement observed. They are also people that have exhausted all or most options on the conservative care side.

They come to our clinics looking for the realistic possibility that simple dextrose injections Prolotherapy will help them achieve their goal of reducing or being pain-free without surgery and continuous treatments.

Typically, in all their treatments, very few will have had any discussion with their health care provider about the role of spinal ligaments in spinal instability as the cause of their problems.

The popular understanding of back pain is disc herniation as a frequent cause, but to a much greater extent, ligament injury forms the underlying basis.

Ligaments hold the disk in place, and with ligament weakness, the disk is more likely to herniate. The first step in determining whether Prolotherapy will be an effective treatment for the patient is to determine the extent of ligament laxity or instability in the lower back by physical examination.

The examination involves maneuvering the patient into various stretched positions. If weak ligaments exist, the stressor maneuver will cause pain. Pain here is an indicator that Prolotherapy can be very effective for the patient.

This is why giving Comprehensive Prolotherapy to stabilize the ligaments is often the ideal treatment, even in patients who have been diagnosed with spinal stenosis. These patients also find it hard to believe that after their Prolotherapy treatments that they do not have to go to surgery. There is plenty of research to support the use of Prolotherapy for back pain especially lumbar pain , here are some of the research summaries.

Citing our own Caring Medical published research in which we followed patients who had suffered from back pain on average of nearly five years, we examined not only the physical aspect of Prolotherapy but the mental aspect of treatment as well. That is not pain management, that is a pain cure. In other Prolotherapy research published in the journal International Musculoskeletal Medicine 22 , researchers in the United Kingdom explored the use of Prolotherapy in patients who had failed to respond to conservative approaches including spinal manipulation and physiotherapy.

These patients had longstanding and often severe pain and disability. If you have ever experienced a pinched nerve or lumbar radiculopathy , you know the pain is excruciating. Burning pain zooming down an extremity can cause such blinding pain, it will stop anyone in their tracks.

But even in cases of acute pain, we have to ask why this problem started in the first place. The answer is ligament laxity, which causes the vertebrae to slip out of place and pinch the nerve. In our office, people with a pinched nerve or lumbar radiculopathy are cases are often seen as needing a two-part solution. This picture illustrates how a Prolotherapy injection can tighten the spinal ligaments and provide relief through providing vertebral alignment therapy.

This will help alleviate the pressure caused by pinched nerves and herniated discs. We can think of spinal stenosis as two different disorders, one needs surgery and the other Prolotherapy.

See Figure. This picture illustrates the severity of symptoms that can occur in situations referred to as Spinal Stenosis At Rest and Spinal Stenosis With Activity. It also explains when surgery will likely be recommended for Stenosis At Rest and when surgery can be avoided in cases of Stenosis With Activity.

The patient who has severe pain, especially nerve irritation down the leg at rest has a narrowing of the space for the nerves that are not affected by activity. It means that there just is never enough room for the nerve, even at rest. This patient would be referred for a surgical decompressive surgery, where the surgeon makes more room for the nerve.

Any residual pain after the surgery can then be treated with Prolotherapy. These are patients who have no symptoms when they are sitting and laying recumbent and resting. But upon standing or walking for too long, they develop back pain, buttock pain, and pain down the leg. In other words, the symptoms are only precipitated by movement or change in position. This means that the nerves have enough room at rest , but the room for the nerve is decreased with standing or walking.

The symptoms are dependent on position. Positional pain is a hallmark feature of conditions that respond to Prolotherapy, in the spine and any joint of the body! We hope you found this article informative and it helped answer many of the questions you may have surrounding your back problems and spinal instability.

If you would like to get more information specific to your challenges please email us: Get help and information from our Caring Medical staff. Subscribe to our newsletter. World Neurosurgery. Current concepts and recent advances in understanding and managing lumbar spine stenosis.

International Journal of Spine Surgery. Spine Phila Pa Degenerative Lumbar Spinal Stenosis. Revista Brasileira de Ortopedia. Optimal treatment for lumbar spinal stenosis: an update. Current Opinion in Anesthesiology. Management of lumbar spinal stenosis. Lumbar spinal stenosis. Neurology is a medical specialty that focuses on diagnosis and nonsurgical treatment of brain and nervous system disorders. Neurologists care for patients with chronic neurological disorders. Neurologists evaluate medical history, and conduct neurological and diagnostic tests for vision, strength, coordination, and sensation.

Primary care covers a wide range of general medical knowledge. Provides the first step of care for patients with undiagnosed health concerns, and also continuing care and referrals to a specialist. Specialties include family medicine, geriatrics, pediatrics, and general internal medicine. Patients with undiagnosed signs, symptoms, or concerns. Those with routine healthcare needs such as check-ups, health promotion, and diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic illness.

Primary care physicians have specific training and skills in giving first-contact, continuing care. They are generalists, caring for most medical and health needs. They are advocates for patients coordinating their care through the health system. Thus, they consult specialists when referrals are needed. Oncology is a medical specialty that focuses on diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Three specialties are medical, radiation, and surgical oncologists. They often work together to manage patient care. Pediatric oncology is another specialty area.

Patients with a diagnosis of cancer e. Cancer is typically managed by a team of specialists from the three disciplines. Patients may consult with oncologist with expertise in a subspecialty e. Oncologists diagnose, assess the disease stage, and plan and deliver treatment or palliative care. Medical oncologists treat cancer with medicine or chemotherapy. Surgical oncologists perform biopsy, staging, and resection of tumors.

Radiation oncologists use therapeutic radiation. Specialty areas can include diagnostic and interventional radiology, and radiation therapy. Patients who require additional diagnostic imaging studies and radiological procedures. They read films and perform minimally invasive image-guided surgery interventional radiology. They play important roles during angioplasty, kyphoplasty, vascular stenting, gamma knife surgery, radiological thrombolysis, and LINAC. Although there is no cure for spinal stenosis, regular exercise, medication and in some cases surgery can provide relief.

Exercise Regular exercise can help you build and maintain strength in the muscles of your arms and upper legs the hip adductors and abductors, quadriceps and hamstrings. This will improve your balance, ability to walk, bend and move about, as well as control pain. A physical therapist can show you which exercises are right for you. Medications Over-the-counter medications such as acetaminophen Tylenol , or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories commonly called NSAIDs such as ibuprofen Advil, Motrin or naproxen Aleve, Anaprox , may also relieve pain.

Cortisone injections corticosteroid injections Injections directly into the area around the spinal cord known as epidural injections may provide a great deal of temporary and occasional permanent relief. There is little objective data however to support use of cortisone injections for spinal stenosis and many studies include other causes for back pain.

These injections are usually given on an outpatient basis in a hospital or clinic setting. Afterwards, doctors often perform a spinal fusion to connect two or more vertebrae and better support for the spine. Several recent studies have found that surgery produces better results than non-surgical treatment in the short term.

However, results vary and, like all surgeries, this one also carries risks. While surgery may bring some relief, it will not cure spinal stenosis or osteoarthritis and symptoms may recur. Spinal stenosis can lead to the slow but steady loss of strength in the legs. The severe pain caused by this condition can be quite disabling, even if you have no muscle weakness, since it greatly affects your ability to work and enjoy life. The natural course of the disease is one of slow progression over time.