Aurora spine care
Personalized, cutting-edge care for your back and spine
Aurora spine care
Personalized, cutting-edge care for your back and spine
Find relief for your back pain
Most people experience back pain at some point in their lives. Back pain is disruptive, interrupting your work life and keeping you from enjoying your favorite activities.
Aurora Health Care spine services offers innovative back and spine surgeries and treatments from a collaborative team of expert providers. In many cases, back pain can be managed with less invasive options like chiropractic care, acupuncture and massage. That’s why our team includes spine physiatrists, physical therapists and integrative medicine experts in addition to top surgeons.
If spine surgery is necessary, we offer minimally invasive options whenever possible – so you can get the care you need and get back to feeling like you again.
Spine conditions we treat
Treatment options for back pain
The spine is broken down into five main parts: cervical spine, thoracic spine, lumbar spine, sacral spine and coccyx.
Back pain – even lower back pain – often goes away on its own in a few days or weeks. If your back pain doesn’t go away or you’re not able to do simple movements, it’s time for expert help.
Our multidisciplinary team of physicians specializes in general back and neck pain, lower back pain, spine pain, muscle strains, herniated discs or slipped discs in the lumbar spine region, bulging discs, sciatica, sciatic nerve pain, lumbar stenosis, spinal fractures, spinal tumors and many other back and spine-related conditions.
Nonsurgical treatment options for back pain
- Spine physiatry: Spine physiatrists are nonsurgical spine physicians trained in physical medicine and rehabilitation. They have extra training in the diagnosis and treatment of back and spine-related conditions. For some patients, spine physiatry may involve receiving precise spinal injections that are administered under X-ray guidance.
- Pain management: Medication and other pain-relieving therapies can improve your back pain and quality of life while allowing you to stay active. Through our spine care program, you’ll be connected with specially trained noninterventional pain management physicians and specialists.
- Diagnostic services: Lab work and imaging to help identify back pain and spine conditions, like herniated discs.
- Rehabilitation:
- Physical therapy
- Spine physical therapy: Spine physical therapists have special training in spine-related conditions. They can help you reduce your back pain and recover lost function through assessment, exercise and education.
- Occupational therapy
- Work specialty therapy ergonomics
- Functional capacity evaluation
- Aquatics
- Integrative medicine:
- Acupuncture: At Aurora, our certified acupuncturists insert very fine needles into skin to stimulate the body’s natural healing response, which can help alleviate distressing physical, emotional and mental symptoms associated with back pain. Dry needling is a similar process that takes a biomedical approach, in which physical therapists use acupuncture needles to alleviate the physical symptoms of back pain.
- Chiropractic: Chiropractors with specialized training in spine manipulation can tailor your treatment to your specific spinal condition, helping to reduce or eliminate back pain altogether.
- Craniosacral therapy: This touch-based therapy is used to heal and enhance the craniosacral system, which consists of the membranes and fluid that surround the brain and spine.
- Massage therapy: Massage can alleviate back pain by decreasing stress and muscle tightness and increasing blood flow to the affected area.
- Behavioral health: Because the mind and body are intrinsically linked, mental and emotional stress can trigger physical back pain. Working with a behavioral health and pain psychologist to improve your emotional and mental state can often relieve back pain.
- Interventional pain: When less invasive options aren’t helping, X-ray-guided spinal injections given by pain fellowship-trained anesthesiologists can help with chronic back pain. For instance, an epidural injection is one type of spinal injection that may provide relief from chronic back pain.
- Community-based services, including:
- Yoga
- Pilates
- Tai chi
- Support groups
What are common spinal surgeries?
If non-surgical options don’t alleviate your back pain, surgical options might be your next best option. Spinal surgeries are common when you have lumbar spine injuries like herniated discs, slipped discs or damaged discs.
Spine surgery options can include:
- Microdiscectomy: A minimally invasive surgery in which a surgeon makes a small window in your bone (lamina) to remove the herniated disc causing pressure on a spinal nerve. Removing the damaged portion of the disc helps you feel better.
- Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF): Surgery performed through the front of the neck (anterior) to remove a damaged disc and bone spurs in the cervical spine region (neck). After the disc is removed, a spacer is inserted to increase room for your nerves. The bones above and below are fused together with a graft and linked with plates screwed into the bones (spinal fusion).
- Laminectomy: A surgical procedure to relieve pressure on the spinal cord and nerves. We remove the lamina – a part of the vertebrae – to create more space in the spinal canal. Since this surgery may make the spine less stable, a spinal fusion may be performed at the same time.
- Lumbar spinal fusion: Surgery to fuse, or connect, vertebrae in the lower back that are causing pain. The damaged disc between vertebrae is removed and the vertebrae above and below it are fused together for stability.
- Minimally invasive spine surgery (MISS): Surgery designed to minimize injury to the normal tissue around the spine to allow for faster healing times, reduction in scar tissue and less pain after surgery. There are many types of MISS. Often smaller incisions are made and smaller instruments are used – leading to smaller scars.
- Kyphoplasty: For patients who have suffered a compression fracture, this minimally invasive procedure guided by X-rays can be used to help relieve back pain. A balloon is inflated to restore some of the height lost with the fracture. Then the doctor injects bone cement to stabilize vertebrae.
- Vertebroplasty: Surgery where your doctor injects a medical-grade substance called bone cement to stabilize a fractured vertebra. This is designed to help relieve pain from the fracture.
- Robotic spine surgery: Surgery that uses robotic assistance to help a surgeon see areas of the spine. A robotically driven arm helps the surgeon precisely place screws into the spine for a spinal fusion procedure.
- CyberKnife®: Innovative treatment that uses highly focused beams of radiation to target cancer cells with pinpoint accuracy while sparing nearby healthy tissue. CyberKnife® can also precisely track moving targets, such as areas in the chest and abdomen that move when you breathe. It can be used to treat lung cancer as well as cancers of the brain, liver, pancreas, spine and pelvis.
What lifestyle changes reduce back or neck pain?
Sometimes home remedies and rest are enough to chase back pain away. Luckily, there’s some lifestyle changes you can make to reduce your current back pain while also strengthening your spine for prevention of future injuries.
If you’re looking to prioritize your back health, consider these changes:
- Maintain a healthy weight
- Maintain good form when lifting
- Practice good posture while sitting and standing
- Quit smoking
- Stretch daily
- Strengthen your core muscles
- Take regular walks
- Use pillows when sleeping to reduce pressure on your back
Is your back pain cause for concern?
Back and neck pain can interrupt even the simplest things in life, and lasting or severe discomfort along your spine could point to a serious problem. Our back and neck pain quiz helps evaluate your spine function, pain symptoms and risk factors and gives you an idea what to do next based on your results.
Take the back and neck pain quiz
Find spine care near you
Aurora spine services makes it easier for you to get back to the things that matter most. With a single entry point and your own care coordinator, you’ll be connected to an integrated team of specialists all working together on your personalized treatment plan. Learn more about our spine experts in eastern Wisconsin.
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