Whether in your neck or back, spinal stenosis is painful and limiting. Back or neck pain makes the activities you enjoy harder and can interfere with your daily life. On top of that, you might also have pain, weakness, or tingling in 1 or both arms or legs.
At UVA Health, we can help you find treatments to ease your pain and get you back to doing what you love. We’ll build a personalized care plan based on your goals for treatment.
Spinal Stenosis Treatment at UVA Health
We offer the full range of spinal stenosis treatment options, including some you won’t find everywhere. Learn about our spine care expertise.
Nonsurgical Spinal Stenosis Treatments
In many cases, we can help you find pain relief without surgery. Our nonsurgical options include:
- Physical therapy
- Pain injections and procedures
- Spinal cord stimulators
Learn more about spine care without surgery.
Surgery for Spinal Stenosis
Some patients need surgery to relieve their spinal stenosis symptoms. We recommend surgery when nonsurgical options aren’t working well enough for you.
You may also need surgery if your spinal stenosis causes neurological problems. Pressure on your nerves can cause pain, weakness, or numbness in your arms or legs. That makes daily activities like grasping objects with your hand or moving your feet to walk difficult. These are unlikely to get better without surgery.
Our expert spine surgeons perform several surgeries for spinal stenosis. In some cases, we perform more than 1 of these procedures at the same time.
- Laminectomy removes a part of your spine bone (vertebra) called the lamina. This widens the space your nerves travel through. That relieves the pressure on the nerves.
- Foraminotomy is another way to make more space for your nerves.
- Spinal fusion is sometimes needed to stabilize your spine. This surgery mimics the way a broken bone heals back together. It fuses (joins) 2 or more vertebrae (spine bones) together with a bone graft. The bone comes from another person or another part of your own body.
Read more about these surgeries for lumbar stenosis and cervical stenosis.
Advanced Surgery Techniques & Technology
Our surgeons have advanced training in minimally invasive surgical techniques that give you a faster recovery with less pain. These include muscle-sparing techniques that avoid cutting through muscle. We also make smaller cuts (incisions).
Using advanced technology makes your healing easier and reduces the risk of complications. We perform robotic surgery, which helps us be more precise. In some cases, we use an implant during spinal fusion that helps stabilize the spine. We offer special spinal implants that are custom-made to fit your body, such as the aprevo device.