This syndrome is caused by previous lumbar surgery. A Laminectomy is cutting and partially removing a bone on the spine to decompress a pinched nerve. After the laminectomy, the patient can still have nerve pain or back pain. If too much bone needs to be removed, it can become unstable and rods and screws are needed to stabilize it. Once major surgery is done, many of the microinvasive options are no longer available. For this syndrome, the options are limited due to the altered anatomy from surgery. The options are to turn to long-term medication management or the use of a stimulator or pain pump. Steroid injections offer limited, or short-term relief (steroids do little to relieve pain from hardware or scar tissue). This is the number one diagnosis that spinal cord stimulators are implanted for in the US.
