Herniated Disc Treatment

What is a herniated disc?

A small disc acts as a cushion between the bones that compose your spine – the vertebrae. These discs are like small shock absorbers when they are healthy and keep the spine flexible. Though, when a disc is damaged, it can bulge or break open. This is known as a herniated, prolapsed or slipped disc.

Herniated discs occur in any part of the spine. However, they are most common in the lower portion of your spine. This is called the lumbar region. But they can also occur in the neck and upper back too. Typically, only one disc will herniate at a time, but some people may experience two or more herniation at once. However, this does depend on the cause of the herniation.

The importance of diagnosis

In order for you to receive the correct treatment for your herniated disc, a proper diagnosis is key. Without it, you may only receive treatment for the symptoms while the condition itself is left to get worse and worse. In a lot of cases, patients will have had Physiotherapy before hand which consisted of things like muscle stretching and exercise, which has next to no impact on the herniated disc itself. Once more, these sorts of activities in the early days, as patients often tell us, actually makes things worse!

Let’s take sciatica as an example again. Sciatica is not a condition, it needs something to motivate it to cause you pain. This something could be a herniated disc. However, if you just receive treatment for sciatica, you’ll never know what was causing it. This is a massive problem because, firstly, you don’t know if the initial condition that caused the sciatica has healed and secondly, you don’t really know what is happening in your body. If the person treating you isn’t aware that the cause of your leg pain could be a herniated disc, they are very unlikely to provide any real relief.

By finding the root of the problem, we can make sure that we treat that, and thus the symptoms will improve. Without finding the root cause, the symptoms may leave for a little while, but they will return until the root cause is treated. This is why our treatments here at The Mayfair Clinic always start with an in-depth consultation and examination.

Treating a herniated disc

Our in-depth consultations are just one reason that we are the best back pain specialist in London. We take this step in your treatment extremely seriously because it possibly the most important step. Your first consultation at The Mayfair Clinic is where we determine the root of your pain. From there, we can create a treatment plan to suit you, your lifestyle and your condition.

At your first consultation at The Mayfair Clinic, we will ask you some questions about your symptoms, when they started, why you think they started and the ways your symptoms have affected your life. We will then perform a physical exam. This physical exam helps us to narrow down the search for the condition causing your pain. Even if we suspect this to be a herniated disc, we still need to locate the disc in question. To do this, special orthopaedic testing can be combined with your symptoms and general examination to really hone in on the area and determine if the cause of your problem is a disc herniation or something else. Once we have completed the examination and testing, we can proceed to create a plan of action to treat the cause of the problem and reduce your levels of pain. In this case, treating a herniated disc.

All of our patients receive a tailor-made treatment programme that suits their lifestyle, the cause of their pain and medical history perfectly. So, although we cannot say what your treatment plan will involve, we can tell you about the equipment and techniques that may be used to treat your herniated disc.

To find out more about treatment for herniated discs, please get in touch. If you think you have a herniated disc and would like The Mayfair Clinics to help treat it, please use the contact form below to book your first consultation and start treatment today!