Had surgery for back, sciatica returning

Hi Matt,

From what I understand, surgery for discs usually does very little for back pain, if anything at all. The primary goal with these surgeries is to relieve radiculopathy pain (radiating butt/leg pain) and/or weakness caused by pressure on the nerve root(s) from the herniated disc(s). So the fact that your back pain did not improve after surgery is not surprising.

As for the return of your leg pain, it could just be inflammatory (I remember reading that you were in a car accident recently, which could have tweaked your back, resulting in a flair up of inflammation at your surgical site), or it is possible that you may have reherniated or herniated a disc at a different level. Unless you have a fusion or a disc replacement (neither or which you had), they do not remove the entire disc during surgery -- so yes, you can reherniate a disc that you already had surgery on.

If you did reherniate or herniated another disc, it does not necessarily mean that you will need more surgery. The vast majority of people with herniated discs causing leg pain (something like 90%) will get better on their own with time alone, and this includes people who were already operated on once before. However, given that you are less than a year out from your last surgery, it might be wise to make an appointment with your surgeon (or at least your primary care doc or PM). Unless you have significant neurologic compromise (progressive weakness in your leg and/or foot and/or loss of bladder/bowel control), chances are the doctor is not going to do anything other than tell you to wait it out (usually at least 12 wks) and possibly put you on a course of oral steroids or send you for epidural injections, both of which may help calm things down/speed your recovery. They may or may not also recommend doing diagnostics (imaging) at this point -- many docs want to wait 2-3 mo to see if things improve on their own before imaging non-neurologically compromised patients with suspected herniations.

So, don't panic yet. The odds are in your favor that this will get better on its own. And I do hope you start feeling better soon. Believe me, I know what you are going through. I have had 3 back surgeries, myself (with 3 out of the 4 procedures being for discs), all within the last 6 mo. Sciatic pain is a horrible thing -- I wouldn't wish it on anyone! Ice, rest (but not too much), walk, and check in with your doctor, and hopefully you will get through this without the need for intervention!

Skeye

Having had a spinal fusion L3-L4 almost 18 months ago I can tell you that it's only been the last month or so that the leg pains have finally almost gone away and I am starting to feel normal again. The surgery definitely fixed the problem and the incredible leg pain I was suffering from has been gone since the surgery but it has been a long slow recovery with good days and bad. There are still days that when I overdue it I can feel the swelling in my back and slight pain in my leg but it now only takes a day to recover instead of a week. Hopefully with time it will get better.