Shoreline

Hi Anita, No it's not a cure for buloging discs or DDD. It's simply a lon lasting nerve block if your having facet joint pain or radiculoopothy, pain down your leg. It doesn't last forever, It masy have to be repeated every year. THere are several minmally invasive surgeries to corect a bulging disc if it's impinging a nevrrrrrrre. But if you have backj pain and no leg pain or Radiculopothy, It would be hard to find a surgeon simply to open you up for exploration. It's really not a good idea and people don't normally have exploratory back surgery unlesss they have an infection that needs cleaning or hardware removed.

IF your pain is mainly back pain, the facet Rhizotomy or RFAmay offer some relief untill the nerve grow nback. The thing is, nobody wants to risk turning an otherwise healthy 20 year old into a CP patient for life that has to deal with intractable pain, disability and all ther other fun stiff that goes along with chronic pain.

Does the disc bulge actually impinge a nerve root or your spinal cord, or is it simply a buldge , that there isn't a reasson to corect because it won't relieve back pain symptoms.

Good luck, I have had the medial blocks but the were not succesful, so I didn't have the RFA. Althogh at one point I was begging the doc just to sever the nerves that ran down my legs because the nerve pain was so great. He was an older doc, and they actually did this in the early 70's but found tha nerve regrowt often takes a new path, the new nerves reach out to anything to make a connection to which can really create problems. So severing nerves fell out of practice, this is the next clsest thing. Fring them chemically or with a heated probe. The idea is to destroy or damage the nerve conducting the signal, but your correct, It's not currative or anything other than a treatment for pain which eventualy wears off. Perhaps it will give you the relief you need to agressively work on PT and recovery from your injury.

It's certainly a question to ask. Now if you have an impingement from the buklge, and your surgeon has neevr done minimally nvasve spine surgery, like arthroscopicor endoscopic, he can't offer what e doesn't know anything about. You would hve to research, Minimally invasive spine surgery and than track down a doc that does this type odf surgery. A small incision or a couple punctures fror tools is much less invasive than cutting through all the back msucles, striping away the fascia, clipping off the spinous process and removing or drilling through the lamina to get to a disc bulge. Open surgery is extremly invasive, causes great scaring and it would tough for any doc to prove a statistic on succes for any aproach they use.

I would get several surgical opinions before alowing them to fry some nerves or perform surgery, ask why this is the best aproach to dealing with your pain, make them explain themselves rather than being the good patient and not bothering the doc with silly questions like what the heck are you thinking and doing.. JMO
Good luck, Dave