Shanta Spine Hospital - Nagpur, India

Cervical spinal stenosis is usually caused by age-related changes in the shape and size of the spinal canal and so is most common in people older than age 50. The aging process can cause a "bulging of the discs"—the spongy discs between the bones of the spine bulge out farther than normal—or a thickening of tissues that connect bones (ligaments). Aging can also lead to the destruction of tissues that cover bones (cartilage) and excessive growth of the bones in joints. These conditions can narrow the spinal canal (spinal stenosis). In rare cases, the spinal canal is narrowed from birth because of the way the bones are formed.

Treatments
In mild cases of spinal stenosis, symptoms can usually be controlled with medicine to relieve pain, exercise to maintain strength and flexibility, and physical therapy. If your symptoms are severe, you have progressive weakness of your muscles or the pictures of your spine show that your spinal cord or nerves are being tightly squeezed; your doctor is likely to recommend decompressive surgery to relieve the pressure. This surgery may be done from the front or the back of the neck. It involves removing some of the disc, bone, and/or tissue that may be pressing on the nerve roots. Vertebrae are often joined together surgically (fused) to provide stability to the spine.

Cervical spinal stenosis can potentially cause serious problems with the nervous system, including problems with bowel or bladder control (incontinence) and permanent loss of strength and feeling in the arms, hands, and legs. Your doctor will not wait for you to have severe symptoms of pain, weakness, and numbness before considering treatment to relieve pressure on your spinal cord and nerves.

Minimally-invasive surgery should have less operative trauma, other complications, and adverse effects than an equivalent open surgery. It may be more or less expensive (for dental implants, a minimally-invasive method reduces the cost of installed implants and shortens the implant-prosthetic rehabilitation time with 4–6 months

Types of Minimally Invasive Surgery
Robotic surgery Advanced robotic systems give doctors greater control and vision during surgery, allowing them to perform safe, less invasive, and precise surgical procedures. During robotic-assisted surgery, surgeons operate from a console equipped with two master controllers that maneuver four robotic arms. By viewing a high-definition 3-D image on the console, the surgeon is able to see the surgical procedure better than ever before.

Non-robotic minimally invasive surgery (endoscopic)

Non-robotic minimally invasive surgery is also known as endoscopic surgery. You also may be familiar with terms like laparoscopic surgery, thoracoscopic surgery, or “keyhole” surgery. These are minimally invasive procedures that utilize an endoscope to reach internal organs through very small incisions.

During endoscopic surgery, the surgeon inserts a thin, flexible tube with a video camera through a small incision or a natural orifice like the mouth or nostrils. The tube has a channel to utilize tiny surgical instruments, which the surgeon uses while viewing the organs on a computer monitor.

Depending on the location and type of spinal tumor, different signs and symptoms can develop, especially as a tumor grows and affects your spinal cord, surrounding nerves or blood vessels. Signs and symptoms of tumors affecting the spinal cord may include:

Back pain, sometimes radiating to other parts of your body
Loss of sensation, especially in your arms or legs
Difficulty walking, sometimes leading to falls
Decreased sensitivity to pain, heat and cold
Loss of bowel or bladder function
Muscle weakness that may occur in varying degrees and in different parts of your body, depending on which nerves or part of the spinal cord is compressed
Back pain is a common early symptom of both noncancerous and cancerous spinal tumors. Pain may also spread beyond your back to your hips, legs, feet or arms and may become more severe over time in spite of treatment.

Spinal tumors progress at different rates. In general, cancerous spinal tumors grow more quickly, and noncancerous spinal tumors tend to develop very slowly.

Treatments
Monitoring- Some spinal tumors may be discovered before they cause symptoms — often when you're being evaluated for another condition.

Surgery-This is often the treatment of choice for tumors that can be removed with an acceptable risk of spinal cord or nerve injury damage.

Radiation therapy-This may be used to eliminate the remnants of tumors that remain after surgery, to treat inoperable tumors or to treat those tumors where surgery is too risky.

Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS)-This method of delivering radiation is capable of delivering a high dose of precisely targeted radiation.

Chemotherapy.-A standard treatment for many types of cancer, chemotherapy uses medications to destroy cancer cells or stop them from growing.