UR Medicine Spine Center

The UR Medicine Spine Center offers a complete range of treatments—from education and diagnosis-specific physical rehabilitation to minor surgical procedures and up to the most complex spine surgeries.

Conservative Treatments

A combination of conservative treatments can include:

• Education: Recommendations on lifestyle adjustments that promote a healthy spine can include smoking cessation, weight loss, proper spine biomechanics, and getting regular exercise.
• Activity modification: Short periods of rest and/or changes in how certain activities are done may be prescribed depending on the patient’s diagnosis and work or lifestyle.
• Orthotics (braces): These devices are used for certain types of non-surgical and surgical conditions.
• Topical treatments: These can include heat, cold, ultrasound, or electrical stimulation to relieve symptoms.
• Topical and/or oral medications: Different options can reduce swelling, manage pain, control muscle spasms, and help with pain-related sleep deprivation.
• Spine-specific physical therapy: A subspecialty-trained spine physical therapist who has expertise in spine conditions can help reduce pain, maximize function, and help patients return to an active lifestyle.
• Spinal manipulation and manual treatments: Experts such as physical therapists and chiropractic massage therapists can work with spinal and soft tissue to improve blood flow, reduce tension, and relieve pain.
• Pain psychology: Patients are sometimes referred to a licensed psychologist with an expertise in pain as part of a comprehensive pain management program. This can help patients develop healthy coping strategies for managing chronic pain.

Interventional and Minor Surgical Procedures

Our specialists also perform procedures such as:

• Corticosteroid injections to safely and precisely resolve pain stemming from inflammation and swelling of a spine structure. This allow the body's own healing mechanisms to repair structural problems.
• Radiofrequency Ablation to relieve low back pain transmitted from painful arthritic spinal joints.
• Vertebral Body Ablation to relieve low back pain from disk endplates and structurally degenerated disks.
• Spinal Cord Stimulator Trial and Implantation to block pain signals from pain-sensitive spinal nerves.

Spinal Surgery

Over 90% of patients with back and neck pain will improve without surgery. However, when non-surgical methods don’t achieve a desired result, spine surgery may be your best option.

Some of the common spine surgical procedures we routinely perform include:

• Discectomy: Removal of a portion of a disk to relieve pressure on a spinal nerve.
• Foraminotomy: Commonly done to treat narrowing of the spinal canal (spinal stenosis), lateral disk herniations, or facet arthritis to free the spinal nerve from compression and irritation.
• Laminotomy and laminectomy: Removing a small amount of the bone over the spinal canal (lamina) to eliminate a source of compression on the spinal cord or nerve root in any part of the back.
• Spinal fusion: For degenerative disk disease, spondylolisthesis or slipped vertebrae, scoliosis, spinal tumor, and spinal trauma. In our level-1 regional trauma center at Strong Memorial Hospital, our surgical experts evaluate and treat the most complex spine fractures and dislocations.