These are the usual fusion surgeries. There’s a whole gambit of fusion surgeries. Now, we can go from front, back, side, lateral, this, that everything, what we can find an angle, we can go do a fusion surgery. This is the most common one, TLIF. We go from the back, put a cage here, put screws here, and put some bone graft inside and on the lateral side and do that.
This is a simple fusion surgery, no cages were used, only posterior screws, rods. They are good at upper lumbar spine. When it comes to lower lumbar spine, L4-5, L5-S1, we need to restore the lordosis to get back the anatomy of the spine. Otherwise, there’s a higher chances of failure. Again, this has not been backed by big researchers, research that has been done a lot of it, but it makes still sense to restore anatomy, especially on the lower lumbar spine.
This is a ALIF, anterior lumbar fusion, interbody fusion. We are using a stand-alone cage here or sometimes a cage, and then other times we put a cage and then back it up with the posterior screws, which are done minimal invasively.
And, this is another one we do now in lateral position, XLIF or DLIF, which are also very effective procedures. They are very effective tool in deformity correction, especially associated with degenerative lumbar spine. These can be done minimally invisibly. Most of them now, in which we make small incisions, go between the intermuscular planes and do surgeries through tubes and small incisions.
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I am Vedant Vaksha, Fellowship trained Spine, Sports and Arthroscopic Surgeon at Complete Orthopedics. I take care of patients with ailments of the neck, back, shoulder, knee, elbow and ankle. I personally approve this content and have written most of it myself.
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