Talismanic footballer Juan Sebastian Veron recently returned to the pitch donning Chelsea colours following surgery on his spine to fix a herniated disc that was pinching nerve roots and causing excruciating pain right down to his bread-winning boot.

In this predicament, which prevented him from kicking a ball for months, the celebrated Argentine doesn’t walk alone. More and more people from all walks of life are falling prey to debilitating disc disorders, and very often, the painful condition is not precipitated by an injury, but the fallout of a hectic lifestyle and ignorance of basic back-care norms.

“More than a third of our OPD patients land up with low-back pain. Half of them have either a bulging or a prolapsed disc and for the rest, the condition is often degenerative, like canal stenosis (narrowing of the spinal canal), that is known to set in from the late 40s,” observes L.N. Tripathy, senior consultant neurosurgeon, Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals.

Doctors all over the city, swamped by cases of disc disorders, attribute the condition generally to not caring enough for the back, bad postures, obesity, sedentary lifestyle and lifting “unaccustomed heavy weights”. The human spine, designed to protect the spinal cord, is made up of 24 small bones (vertebrae) stacked on top of each other to create the spinal column.

Between each vertebra is a soft, gel-like cushion called ‘disc’ that acts as shock absorber, and keeps the bones from rubbing against each other. A prolapsed or a bulging disc, caused by injury or accelerated wear and tear, can compress nerve roots, triggering waves of pain along the nerve distribution system.

Rahul De, senior consultant neurosurgeon, National Neurosciences Centre (NNC) located on the Peerless Hospital premises, feels low back pain with sciatica (radiation of pain down the leg along the nerve distribution channel) has now come into sharp focus, thanks to the advent of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). “This magic diagnostic tool ensures pinpoint accuracy in detecting the cause of disc-related pain, making it easier to choose the apt treatment option,” he says.

Nonetheless, even with the advent of minimally invasive or ‘keyhole’ spinal surgery and endoscopic lumbar discectomy (the procedure that got Veron back on the ball), neurosurgeons maintain patients for the knife must be chosen “extremely carefully”. A ‘failed back syndrome’ (when there is no relief from pain post-surgery) is known to make things worse at times.

In cases where surgery is not indicated, a more conservative path of treatment is followed, often entailing different modes of pain management. Physical medicine experts work in tandem with pain consultants and nerve and bone specialists, using various methods like subcutaneous nerve stimulation, epidural injection of steroids or facet joint injections, besides external therapy, to alleviate the pain. While NNC already has a dedicated pain clinic, Apollo Gleneagles and many other centres are also putting in place pain consultants to work in sync with multiple disciplines.