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Spine Center

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Neuroplasty, cure slipped disk by injection

Since human have evolved to walk upright, disk has bothered mankind. Thanks to the state of the art surgery methods, a world that we could be free from pain has arrived.

A disk surgery that can be performed not only without touching the muscle, bone, nerve, but also does not go through general anesthesia and big incision, is called Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery(MISS).

These are some of the types of a disk surgery that doesn’t need general anesthesia and a big incision at the waist, referred as Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery(MISS): Chemonucleolysis using chymopapain, automated percutaneous lumbar discectomy(APLD), endoscopic nucleotomy, percutaneous endoscopic lumbar discectomy(PELD), Bi-portal endoscopic spine surgery(BESS), endoscopic laser surgery. Although the method and devices may differ, the fundamental aim of these surgeries are to relieve pain by eliminating the nueleus pulposus inside the disk and reducing the pressure within the disk.

Recently amongst these disk surgeries, a new kind of surgery Nucleoplasty using the Arthrocare, a surgery performed using a simple needle with no incision at the affected areas, is getting attention from the public.

So far on clinical tests, this operation technique has shown high success rates, and because of the advantage being able to leave the hospital on the day of surgery, it is attracting the public’s attention as an advanced operation method.

How the procedure is done

Nucleoplasty, an advanced surgery method using the Arthrocare, is performed after local anesthesia starting with inserting the 0.8mm micro needle inside the spinal disk, which is causing the pain. A high-density ionizer made with high frequency at low temperature, quickly decompose, melt, and eliminate the nueleus pulposus molecule inside the disk that was pressuring the spinal chord. While the needle is extracted, it cures the nueleus pulposus by contracting and coagulating.

Patient’s who can be effective by neuroplasty

Neuroplasty is comparatively efficient to young patients. If you’re a patient with all 5 conditions described below, you’ll be able to obtain satisfactory results.

  • Patients with non disk rupture
  • Patients with low osteoarthritic changes during MRI run.
  • Patients with severe symptoms with strain on the legs, rather than the backache
  • Patients who didn’t get improve with physical theraphy & kinesitherapy
  • Patients with no lumbar spinal canal and spinal instability

The pros and cons of neuroplasty

- Pros

Can be performed within a brief time with local anesthesia, hospitalization is not needed. In many cases, it doesn’t require other costs besides surgery fee. Since it uses a thin needle of 0.8mm, it leaves no surgical scar and has less pain. Because a conversation is available between patient and doctor during the operation, this can reduce the patient’s emotional burden and fear of going through an operation, and feel fast improvement on the symptoms after the operation. The surgery only needs local anesthesia, and the patient may leave the hospital on the day of the surgery. So it is very convenient to patients.

- Cons

The doctor cannot check the nerve root decompression directly, and could only check the patient’s symptoms improve indirectly. This operation method could only be performed on disc prolapse patients with none ruptured disks, patients with spinal stenosis and spinal instability are not suitable for this operation method.

Medical Team

  • 조경근

    Director of Hospital

    Jo Gyeonggeun

    Neurosurgery

    Spinal diseases (neck and lumbar disc, stenosis, fracture), brain diseases (head trauma, cerebral hemorrhage, brain tumor)

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  • 유수일

    the head of a medical clinic

    Yoo Suil

    Neurosurgery

    Spinal disorder such as intervertebral · cervical herniated disk, Chronic recurrens disc disorders, disc radiofrequency treatment and neuroplasty, traumatic spine surgery reconstruction, specialized diagnosis and treatment of brain disease such as apoplexy, cerebral infarction, cerebral hemorrhage etc.

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