First question already! And very much to the point.. Thanks for submitting your question (via e-mail), Discman. Well, to answer it, it depends on whether you’re the doctor or the patient! Enough joking though: from your nickname I assume that you have been diagnosed with a herniated lumbar disc, and if that’s the case, you should be out of the hospital the first day following the procedure. The procedure is called microdiscectomy, performed under a microscope via a small (2-3 cm) skin incision. The operation itself lasts about 30-60 minutes for a routine lumbar disk procedure. Of course, technical problems may arise and the operation may take a bit longer, and some patients may take a few days recovering from the surgery. But the great majority of these patients, at least in our unit, are discharged on the first postoperative day. Some spinal procedures, such as stabilizing procedures with extensive instrumentation, may warrant a longer stay, e.g. 3-4 days. Finally I’d like to add that while microdiscectomy is a routine operation in many units, it is a serious procedure and the results are excellent only when the diagnosis and indications for surgery are well established, and the technical skill of the surgeon is sufficient. Rule of thumb is not to operate when back pain is the main complaint, only operate when radicular pain (pain that radiates into the lower extremity) is present and its distribution matches the nerve root that is compressed by the herniated disc.
I would appreciate it if you could include more detail when you submit your question. I’ll need to write up a list of essentials later, but generally the more detail you give me, the more accurate my answer will be.
Your comments are welcome: What did you think of this answer? Understandable? Too technical? Too general? Complete rubbish?