For someone experiencing back pain, or if someone has been told they need spine surgery, a second opinion at Texas Health Care Fort Worth's Bone & Joint Clinic can provide non-surgical treatment options to help avoid spine surgery. Although surgery can be an appropriate option for some patients, many cases of back and neck pain can respond well to nonsurgical treatments like a spinal injection and physical therapy..

Many times, a surgeon may be biased towards surgery and might fail to share the array of non-surgical treatment options available to the patient. The spine specialists at Texas Health Care Fort Worth's Bone & Joint Clinic exhaust non-surgical options first. This includes the use of spinal injections, a simple procedure that can relieve the pressure caused by a herniated disc pressing on adjacent nerve roots, a condition that often leads to pain radiating into a leg or arm. The spinal injection treatment is an in-office or ambulatory surgery center procedure that can take less than an hour.

A more serious symptom, however, is where the patient experiences numbness or weakness into a hand or foot. "The patient cannot use watchful waiting for numbness or weakness because those symptoms can become permanent and lifelong if they wait too long to relieve the pressure on the nerve," explains Dr. Brezina, board certified and fellowship trained orthopedic surgeon.