If nonoperative treatments fail to effectively suppress the symptoms of spinal stenosis, your doctor may recommend surgery.
The goal of surgery is to simply widen the spinal canal and thus relieve the pain-inducing pressure on the spinal cord or the spinal nerves.
One commonly recommended form of surgery is called a decompressive laminectomy. This procedure creates more space for the nerves by effectively removing the roof (or lamina) of the vertebra with or without removing part of the disc or fusing vertebrae. Unstable areas of the spine may need to be fused with the use of rods and screws.
Stenosis can also be treated by a number of other surgeries:
Laminotomy
This surgery specifically removes only a small portion of the lamina, thus relieving pressure on the nerve roots.
Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion
This procedure involves relieving the condition called nerve root compression by removing the intervertebral disc through a small incision made near the front of the neck. The removed disc is replaced by a bone graft between the adjacent vertebrae.
Cervical corpectomy
The removal of the vertebral body and adjacent intervertebral discs to allow decompression of the cervical spinal canal as well as spinal nerves. A metal plate and screws along with a bone graft is used to obtain a fusion.
