The discs within your spine are the round, cushioning tissues between the vertebrae (spine bones). They absorb shock and allow you to twist, bend, and otherwise move your back.

Degenerative disc disease is a condition that causes your discs to become weaker with time and more prone to damage, like disc herniation. By itself, degenerative disc disease tends to cause symptoms like back pain or neck pain depending on the location along the spine where the discs are getting weaker.

Pain from disc degeneration is most common in the lumbar spine (lower back) and cervical spine (neck). These two parts move more than your thoracic spine (the center), though you can still get disc degeneration there too.

Your risk for degenerative disc disease increases over the years as your discs get older and naturally weaker. However, there are also circumstances and medical conditions that put you at a higher risk of degenerative disc disease than others in your age group, regardless of your age.

You’re more likely to get degenerative disc disease if you:

• Are overweight or obese

• Experience an acute spinal injury

• Sit all day at work

• Stand all day at work

• Have a labor-intensive occupation

• Smoke

• Are a woman

If you get neck or back pain, Dr. Creek can perform a comprehensive evaluation at The Neck and Back Institute of Florida to determine if degenerative disc disease is the cause. He asks lots of questions about how the pain started and what it feels like before using imaging scans to look at your discs and spinal alignment.

Dr. Creek specializes in performing surgeries to treat degenerative disc disease. Usually, you can ease your symptoms well enough with non-surgical treatments like physical therapy or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications. If those methods don’t work well for you, Dr. Creek can treat you with:

• Minimally invasive discectomy

  • Minimally invasive discectomy is a surgery to remove a portion of a weak disc, which takes the pressure off nearby pinched or compressed nerves.

• Spinal fusion

  • Spinal fusion surgeries connect two or more of your vertebrae together to stabilize your spine.

• Laminectomy

  • Laminectomy is a surgery to make more space in the spine for the nerves, which may be compressed by bulging or herniated discs.

• Disc replacement

  • Disc replacement surgeries remove a damaged disc and replace it with a comparable artificial disc device.