
Rochester, MN: 507-718-5601
8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Central Time, Monday through Friday
Complex Spine Care at Mayo Clinic
Choose Mayo Clinic for world class complex spine care and get the right treatment plan to address your current concerns – and preserve your spine health for the future. Our experts are skilled in advanced treatments and technologies designed to improve outcomes, reduce hospital stays, lower complication rates, and shorten recovery times. Care from Mayo Clinic starts with an accurate diagnosis and can continue after a patient leaves the hospital and returns home.
With Mayo Clinic, you can rest assured you are receiving the best care – and the right care – to place you on the path to recovery.
Deep experience with complex conditions.
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, discitis, herniated disk, kyphosis, lumbar radiculopathy, lumbar spondylosis, myelopathies, neurogenic claudication (pseudoclaudication), sciatica, scoliosis, spinal stenosis, spine deformity spondylotic myelopathy, synovial cyst, syringomyelia, and thoracic radiculopathy.
Experts who have your best interest in mind.
Mayo Clinic experts are guided by the principle that the “needs of the patient come first.” To customize your care plan, we bring together experts across specialties including neurophysiology, neuroradiology, neurosurgery, orthopedic spine surgery, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and sports medicine. We also can work with your local providers to plan for convenient, ongoing care.
Access to cutting-edge treatments.
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. Mayo Clinic teams can use artificial intelligence to access and autonomy for patient’s seeking and improve advanced spine care.
Our patients have access to treatment options such as:
- Spinal deformity corrections to realign the spinal column and relieve pain and improve quality of life. Our team is dedicated to patient specific solutions for this complex disease process, and we leverage the latest technology to deliver the best outcomes.
- Minimally invasive 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.
- 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 is also leading new research with biological therapy, and currently offers regenerative therapy for degenerative spinal conditions including stem cell therapy for lumbar facet arthritis.
The power of advanced diagnostics.
Effective treatment starts with accurate diagnosis. At Mayo Clinic, we use advanced diagnostic tools. These include:
- Innovative radiological techniques, including advanced neuroimaging (MRI or CT myelography), electrophysiology and intraoperative monitoring.
- 3D imaging to help pinpoint a spinal disorder and plan for the best surgical outcome.
- Specialized nerve conduction and muscle tests.
- Assessment and optimization of bone health prior to major spinal surgery.
When it's time to find answers, you know where to go.
Our other locations:
Arizona
Florida
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.


Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center is designated by the National Cancer Institute as a comprehensive cancer center.
Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center is nationally accredited by the American College of Surgeons' Commission on Cancer (CoC).
Any use of this site constitutes your agreement to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy below.
A single copy of these materials may be reprinted for noncommercial personal use only. “Mayo,” “Mayo Clinic,” “MayoClinic.org,” “Mayo Clinic Healthy Living,” and the triple-shield Mayo Clinic logo are trademarks of Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research.
© 1998-2024 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER). All rights reserved.