Discograms

Discograms are another procedure we use to assist surgeons in determining whether they should be doing surgery at certain levels. Discography was meant to really treat discogenic back pain, so back pain specifically due to the disc, not necessarily to pinched nerves, degenerative disc disease, spinal problems, but simply due to the disc itself. So the disc itself has pathology, what we can do under anesthesia again, is place two needles, or sometimes one needle, into the annulus of the disc, into the center part of the disc that’s in question. With that, we can place dye under pressure, to determine if that is the actual disc that is causing the pain. We call that being congruent with the patient’s symptoms. We can do multiple levels; one control level that we know is not involved with the paint symptoms and one or two experimental levels. Should the patient exhibit the exact same pain that they have at home, then we call that congruent, and then we can relay that information back to the surgeon so they can make a better decision whether to proceed with surgery or more conservative means.