Complex Spine Care - Mayo Clinic in Florida

More than 40,000 adults and children with spine disorders come to Mayo Clinic each year. We treat the most complex spine conditions, including cervical radiculopathy, cervical spondylosis, disk disease, diskitis, herniated disk, kyphosis, lumbar radiculopathy, lumbar spondylosis, myelopathies, neurogenic claudication (pseudoclaudication), sciatica, scoliosis, spinal stenosis, spine deformity, spondylotic myelopathy, spinal tumor, synovial cyst, syringomyelia, and thoracic radiculopathy.

We perform spinal deformity corrections, complex spinal fusions, and minimally invasive procedures and use surgery enhancing technology to allow for greater precision to allow patients to focus on recovery and return to everyday activities.

Our patients have access to treatment options such as: 

Spinal deformity corrections are performed to realign the spinal column and relieve pain and improve quality of life.
Minimally invasive spine surgery, such as endoscopic spine surgery,  can be used for decompression, disk replacement and spinal fusion, and minimizes damage to soft tissue around the spine and has less blood loss and pain for the patient.
Image-guided and robotic assisted spinal surgery techniques are used for spinal decompression and fusion, and patients with degenerative spine disease have shown less need for pain medicine and faster recovery times.
Mayo Clinic routinely performs single position spinal reconstructive surgery. This cutting-edge approach typically allows for shorter operating times and hospital stays compared with conventional lumbar interbody fusion (LIF).
Mayo Clinic is also leading new research with cell and gene therapy for degenerative invertebral disk disease and currently offers regenerative therapy for degenerative spinal conditions including phase 2 clinical trial of stem cell therapy for lumbar facet arthritis.
Development of the awake spine surgery program has led to improved patient outcome. The combination of minimally invasive approach with spinal anesthesia, or awake spine surgery, has proven to result in shorter operating time, better pain control, earlier return to activity, reduced post-operative fatigue and shorter hospital stays.

Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery at Mayo Clinic

At Mayo Clinic, we see a wide range of patients with spinal issues. not all of these spinal issues are surgical in nature. The reason behind doing minimally invasive surgery is because it disrupts tissue as little as possible. Our goal is to treat every patient that we can with non operative care first. This includes physical therapy evaluation by an interventional pain specialist. If you've been through an evaluation, you've done therapy, you've had some injections done to your spine. Maybe you saw a chiropractor or an acupuncturist and none of those are really working for you anymore. That's when seeing a surgeon who may offer this option to you is a good idea. With minimally invasive surgery, patients are generally happier because they tend to recover faster. We can get patients back to work within two to three weeks. Minimally invasive surgery in general is a field within surgery where the emphasis is on disrupting tissue as little as possible.

So with relation to spine surgery, there's a lot of upfront benefits. There are smaller incisions, less pain, shorter stays in the hospital if any, and less narcotic utilization after surgery. Patients want to get back to life, they want to get back to moving. There is no area in spine surgery that is more dependent on technology than minimally invasive surgery. We use everything from advanced neuromonitoring to image guidance to the most recent implant technology to obtain a good result. At Mayo Clinic, we're using some of the most advanced 3D technology that's out there to build models and plan the surgery itself. So that once we're in the room we can execute it flawlessly. A lot of times these are part of our preoperative discussion with patients. But after surgery, we also try to transition patients quickly into physical therapy to help speed up their recovery. At Mayo Clinic, we see a large volume of patients. The large volume of patients translates into significant experience. Overall, we evaluate every patient individually and to see if a patient is a good candidate. Truly minimally invasive surgery is really changing how we do spinal surgery, whether that's neck surgery or low back surgery. The technology, both in terms of what's implanted, in terms of how it's done, how the patients are taken care of after surgery. That's really changing and I want to give the patients the best opportunity to do well with the least amount of invasiveness. Every patient is someone's relative. They're someone's mother, father, child. So it's important to treat them the same way you would treat your own.

Complex Spine Care at Mayo Clinic

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Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery at Mayo Clinic