If you’ve been dealing with the painful effects of osteoporosis, you understand how impactful this disease can be on your daily life. Physicians will begin by treating a patient with osteoporosis patient with non-surgical methods, such as medication, diet changes, and a daily exercise routine. However, for some patients, osteoporosis has already reached later stages that cannot be treated with these comprehensive methods. If you haven’t seen an improvement within three months of treatment, surgery must be considered.

If you are suffering from spinal osteoporosis and comprehensive treatment methods have not been successful in treating your symptoms, find out how surgery can benefit you.

What is Osteoporosis?

Osteoporosis is a metabolic bone disease that affects men and women as they grow older. Caucasian and Asian women and most at risk for this disease, and while it’s not common for children to develop it, it is possible.

It affects mostly men and women as they get older because they begin to lose bone mass, making their bones brittle, weak, and more susceptible to injuries, most often in the spine, wrists and hips. Bone tissue is constantly regenerating in the body, meaning old bone is removed and replaced with new bone. New bone is created fast than old bone is broken down in young people, but when a person reaches their twenties, they begin to lose bone mass faster than it’s created. This continues as the person ages.

Symptoms don’t typically show up during the early stages of osteoporosis, so patients don’t know they’re dealing with the disease until they suffer from a fracture from a minor injury.

Surgery for Osteoporosis

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When treatment methods such as medication, exercise and diet don’t help the effects of osteoporosis after three months of treatment, surgery may be the only option. Two minimally invasive surgical procedures for osteoporotic fractures of the spine are kyphoplasty and vertebroplasty. Learn more about these treatment methods.

Kyphoplasty

During this procedure, a small incision is made in the back then a small tube is placed through it. The tube is guided into the correct position which creates a path through the back into the fractured area. The surgeon uses x-rays to insert a below into the vertebrae then inflates it. The inflation of the balloon returns the fractured pieces to a more appropriate position, relieving pain and creating a cavity.

After the balloon is removed, the doctor fills the cavity with a material that hardens and stabilizes the bone.

Vertebroplasty

This minimally invasive procedure involves inserting low viscosity cement directly into the collapsed vertebral body to stabilize the fracture. It can also prevent further deformity, such as spine curvature or loss of height.

Vertebroplasty is different from kyphoplasty because it does not typically involve manipulation before the injection.

If you’ve been dealing with the pain of spinal osteoporosis, these two procedures could significantly reduce the symptoms. To learn more about how the dedicated physicians at Premier Orthopaedics could help relieve your pain from osteoporosis,click here to contact us.