What Herniated Disc Surgery Usually Relieves: Leg Pain First, Numbness Later, Back Pain Less

She had already rearranged her life around the pain. A cushion wedged behind her in the car, a standing desk that stopped being optional, a nightly ritual of lying on the floor with a pillow under her knees because that was the one position her right leg would tolerate. Ten weeks in, with the MRI report on the kitchen table and a surgeon’s appointment on the calendar, the question she kept circling was not whether to have the operation. It was what, exactly, she should expect it to fix.

That question deserves a more honest answer than most patient stories give it. Herniated disc surgery results are not one thing. The operation is very good at one job, slower at a second, and genuinely uncertain at a third. Knowing which symptom belongs in which column changes how you weigh the decision, how you judge your recovery, and when you should pick up the phone.

This article walks through all three columns, using what the trials actually showed rather than what the brochures imply.

Why leg pain is what herniated disc surgery results are really about

A herniated disc is a spinal cushion whose soft center has pushed through a tear in its tougher outer ring. On its own, that bulge is not the problem; plenty of people have one on a scan and never feel it. The trouble begins when the displaced material presses on, and chemically irritates, a nerve root leaving the spine. In the low back, that nerve root travels down the leg, which is why the classic symptom is not in the back at all. It is sciatica, the sharp, electric, often burning pain that runs from the buttock down the thigh and calf, sometimes into the foot.

Surgeons are candid about this among themselves: the operation is designed for the leg. A discectomy removes the fragment of disc that is compressing the nerve. It does not rebuild the disc, tighten the ligaments, strengthen the muscles or reverse the wear that let the disc fail in the first place. When the pressure comes off the nerve, the symptom that nerve was generating tends to fade first and fastest. Symptoms with other causes are left largely as they were.

This is why the phrase herniated disc surgery results can mislead if it is read as a single verdict. Ask three different questions and you get three different answers. Did the leg pain go? Very often, and quickly. Did the numb patch on the outside of the foot come back to life? Perhaps, and slowly. Did the deep ache across the low back that started years before the leg ever hurt disappear? That one is a coin toss, and a well-run consultation should say so plainly.

Hold those three columns in mind. Everything that follows sorts into one of them.

What actually happens during a discectomy

Discectomy simply means removing part of a disc. In modern practice it is almost always a microdiscectomy, the same operation done through an incision often shorter than a matchstick, using a microscope or magnifying loupes so the surgeon can work through a small window rather than a wide opening.

You are asleep under general anesthesia, lying face down. The surgeon makes a short cut over the affected level, moves the back muscles aside rather than cutting through them, and removes a small piece of the bony roof of the spinal canal. That step is called a laminotomy, a keyhole in the vertebra that lets the surgeon see the nerve root. The nerve is gently retracted, and the fragment of disc that has escaped and is pressing on it is lifted out. Loose pieces still inside the disc that look ready to follow are often removed too, but the disc as a whole stays in place. The remaining structure is still a disc, thinner and with a healed-over defect, but doing its job.

The whole thing typically takes an hour or two. Many people go home the same day or after one night, according to Mayo Clinic’s overview of the procedure. Walking is usually encouraged within hours, partly because it lowers the risk of blood clots and partly because nerves and muscles recover better in motion than in bed.

What the operation does not do is worth stating just as clearly. It does not fuse the bones together; that is a different and larger operation reserved for instability or other problems. It does not replace the disc. And it does not touch the nerve fibers themselves, which is why the speed of nerve recovery afterward depends on biology, not on the surgeon’s skill.

Who is usually offered surgery, and who is asked to wait

Most people with a symptomatic herniated disc never see an operating room. The NHS notes that a slipped disc usually improves over roughly six weeks with staying active, ordinary pain relief and time. The body reabsorbs much of the herniated material, inflammation settles, and the nerve stops complaining. That natural history is the single most important fact in this entire topic, because it means surgery is competing against a condition that often gets better on its own.

So who is usually offered an operation? Guidelines and major centers describe a fairly consistent picture. Mayo Clinic lists surgery as a consideration when symptoms have not improved after about 6 to 12 weeks of nonsurgical care, when leg pain is severe enough to limit walking or standing, or when there is progressive weakness in the leg or foot. The scan has to match the story: a herniation at the level and side that explains the symptoms. A dramatic MRI with a mild, improving leg is not usually an indication.

Two situations move surgery from optional to urgent. Cauda equina syndrome, in which a large herniation compresses the bundle of nerves at the base of the spinal canal, causes new bladder or bowel problems and numbness around the groin and buttocks; it is treated as an emergency. Rapidly worsening weakness, such as a foot that suddenly will not lift when walking (foot drop), is the other.

Who is asked to wait? People whose main complaint is back pain rather than leg pain, whose leg symptoms are already easing, or whose scan findings do not line up with their exam. Waiting is not a consolation prize. For many, it is the path with the best balance of benefit and risk, and the decision to shift from waiting to operating sits with the treating team, revisited as symptoms evolve.

Why the leg pain improves before the numbness does

People are often surprised that a single nerve can recover on two different timetables. The explanation lies in how nerves are injured and how they heal.

Pain from a compressed nerve root is largely a signal of ongoing irritation: mechanical pressure plus a chemical soup of inflammatory substances leaking from the damaged disc. Remove the fragment and the pressure is gone the moment the surgeon lifts it out. The chemical irritation settles over days as the tissue calms. That is why some people wake from anesthesia and notice, through the soreness of the incision, that the familiar shooting pain down the leg has simply stopped. Others feel it fade over the first week or two. Either pattern is common, according to MedlinePlus’s overview of diskectomy.

Numbness is a different kind of damage. When pressure on a nerve root is sustained for weeks or months, the insulating sheath around individual fibers can be stripped and some fibers stop conducting altogether. Restoring the sheath takes weeks. Regrowing a damaged fiber takes far longer, because nerve fibers regenerate slowly, on the order of a millimeter a day, and a fiber that has to regrow from the low back to the toes has a very long road. Some fibers never make the trip, which is why a patch of altered sensation on the shin or foot can remain long after the pain has gone.

Weakness sits between the two. Muscles that were inhibited by pain often switch back on quickly once the pain lifts. Muscles whose motor fibers were genuinely damaged recover on the slow nerve timetable, and physical therapy is aimed at making the most of whatever returns. The practical lesson is to judge recovery by the leg pain in the first weeks and by sensation and strength over months, not days.

Why back pain is the least predictable part of the outcome

Here is the uncomfortable truth that the title of this article is built around. Herniated disc surgery is not back surgery in the sense most people imagine. It is nerve-decompression surgery that happens to be performed through the back.

Low back pain in someone with a herniated disc can come from several places at once. The torn outer ring of the disc has its own nerve supply and can ache. Facet joints, the small joints at the back of each vertebra, can be inflamed. Muscles guarding a painful spine tighten and hurt. A disc that has lost height changes the mechanics of the whole segment. None of these is addressed by removing the herniated fragment, and the operation itself involves cutting through skin and lifting muscle, which adds a temporary source of soreness of its own.

In the Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT), a large randomized study of surgery versus nonsurgical care for lumbar disc herniation, both groups improved on measures of pain and function over two years, and the surgical group did better on leg-dominant outcomes when analyzed by the treatment people actually received. Back pain scores also improved, but the gap between surgery and nonsurgical care was narrower and less consistent than for leg pain. Mayo Clinic’s patient information puts it more directly: discectomy works best for leg pain, and results for back pain are less predictable.

This does not mean back pain never improves after surgery. Many people find that once the leg stops screaming they move more normally, stop guarding, and the back settles as a result. Others have a good leg and the same back they had before. If back pain is your dominant complaint, that is the single most important thing to raise before consenting, because it changes what a good result would even look like.

Herniated disc surgery results compared with waiting: what the trials showed

Two randomized trials shape most of what clinicians say about this decision, and they are worth knowing by name because they are the reason the advice is so measured.

SPORT, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, enrolled adults with imaging-confirmed lumbar disc herniation and at least six weeks of symptoms. Half were randomized to surgery, half to continued nonsurgical care. The complication was that many people crossed over: some assigned to surgery got better and declined it, while some assigned to waiting could not tolerate the pain and had the operation. In the analysis that respected the original assignment, the two groups were not significantly different, largely because of that crossover. In the analysis of what people actually received, surgery produced larger improvements in pain and function, and those advantages persisted at follow-up.

The Dutch trial led by Peul, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, randomized people with severe sciatica of 6 to 12 weeks’ duration to early surgery or to prolonged conservative treatment with surgery only if needed. Early surgery relieved leg pain roughly twice as fast. By one year, however, the two groups had converged: outcomes were similar whether the operation was done early, late or not at all, because a large share of the wait-first group recovered without it.

Read together, the trials say something neither a surgeon nor a skeptic would say alone. Surgery is a faster route to relief of leg pain, and for people with severe or persistent symptoms the difference is real and lasting. Waiting is a reasonable route too, and most who take it do well. The choice is less about which path ends in a better place and more about how much pain you are willing to carry while you find out.

Which symptoms usually improve after herniated disc surgery, and how fast

Patients tend to ask about the operation as a whole. It is more useful to ask about each symptom separately, because they run on different clocks and have different odds. The table below summarizes the typical pattern described by Mayo Clinic, MedlinePlus and the trial literature. The ranges are typical, not promises, and your own timeline depends on how long the nerve was compressed, how severe the deficit was going in, and factors your surgeon can assess far better than any table.

Symptom	How reliably surgery helps	Typical timeline for change	Why
Shooting leg pain (sciatica)	Most reliable target of the operation	Often within days; commonly within the first 1–2 weeks	Pressure and chemical irritation on the nerve root are removed directly
Weakness inhibited by pain	Usually improves	Days to weeks	Muscles switch back on once pain stops guarding them
Weakness from nerve fiber damage	Variable; may be partial	Weeks to many months	Motor fibers regenerate slowly along the length of the leg
Numbness or altered sensation	Variable; can be incomplete	Weeks to months; sometimes permanent residual patch	Sensory fibers heal slowly and some do not recover
Low back pain	Least predictable	Incision soreness settles over weeks; underlying back pain may or may not change	Disc tear, joints and muscles are not addressed by removing the fragment

Notice the order in that table. It is the order of the title, and it is the order most surgeons will describe if you ask them to be specific. Leg pain first. Numbness later, and not always fully. Back pain least of all.

The honest version of a good result, then, is a leg that no longer dictates how you sit, stand and sleep, with sensation and strength catching up over the following months, and a back that may need its own plan.

What the first days and weeks after surgery usually look like

The first thing many people notice on waking is soreness at the incision, a bruised, pulled-muscle feeling in the low back that is different in character from the nerve pain they came in with. Alongside it, often on the same day, comes the observation that the leg feels different. Some describe the shooting pain as gone; others describe it as turned down.

Walking begins within hours. Nurses will get you up, and the goal for the first week is short, frequent walks rather than long ones. Sitting for long stretches is usually limited early on, and bending, lifting and twisting are restricted for several weeks while the small window in the disc heals over. The precise restrictions vary between surgeons and are set by your team, not by a general article.

According to Mayo Clinic’s guidance on diskectomy, people with desk-based work often return within about 2 to 6 weeks, while those whose jobs involve heavy lifting or long hours on their feet are commonly advised to wait around 6 to 8 weeks. Driving usually resumes once you are off any medicine that clouds judgment and can twist comfortably to check mirrors, again on your team’s say-so.

Physical therapy often starts within the first few weeks. Its early aims are modest: restoring normal walking, teaching you to move without guarding, and gradually loading the back and hips. Later it shifts to strength and endurance, which is where the long-term protection against future episodes is thought to come from.

Expect some ups and downs. A twinge of leg discomfort after a longer walk in week two is common as an irritated nerve settles. A steady return of the original pain, or new weakness, is not, and belongs in the section on when to call your doctor.

What is life after herniated disc surgery like?

The question people type into a search box is rarely about the operating room. It is about six months later. Will I sit through a movie, carry groceries, sleep on my side, get back on the bike?

For most people whose surgery was done for leg-dominant symptoms, life after herniated disc surgery gradually stops being organized around the spine. The wedge cushion goes back in the closet. Long drives become possible again. In the SPORT cohort, gains in physical function and daily activity were sustained through the years of follow-up in those who had surgery, and people who chose nonsurgical care also improved substantially over time. The point is not that surgery guarantees a normal life, but that a normal life is a common destination by either route.

Two adjustments tend to stick. The first is a new respect for the back’s mechanics: lifting with the hips rather than the waist, breaking up long sitting, keeping the core and hip muscles working. The second is a changed relationship with minor pain. Almost everyone who has had a disc herniation will feel their back again at some point. Learning to tell an ordinary muscular ache from a returning nerve symptom is a skill, and it is one of the most valuable things a good physical therapist teaches.

Some people carry a small numb patch on the foot or shin indefinitely. Most describe it as a curiosity rather than a disability once the pain is gone. A minority have persistent back pain that needs its own management, and a minority experience a recurrence at the same disc. Cleveland Clinic notes that a disc that has herniated once can herniate again, which is the strongest argument for the exercise habits that follow the operation.

What are the pros and cons of herniated disc surgery?

Weighing this decision means holding two true things at the same time: the operation is one of the more reliable procedures in spine surgery, and most people who avoid it also do well.

On the benefit side, the case rests on speed and certainty of leg pain relief. The Peul trial found early surgery relieved sciatica about twice as fast as prolonged conservative care. For someone who cannot work, sleep or care for children, months matter, and shortening the period of severe pain is a real outcome, not a soft one. Surgery also removes ongoing pressure from a nerve that is showing signs of damage, which is why progressive weakness pushes clinicians toward operating rather than waiting.

On the cost side, every operation carries risk. Mayo Clinic lists the recognized complications of diskectomy: bleeding, infection, a leak of the fluid that surrounds the nerves, and injury to nerves or blood vessels. Each is uncommon, and each is a reason the decision is not taken lightly for a condition that often resolves. The disc may herniate again at the same level, sometimes requiring a second operation. Scar tissue can form around the nerve. And, as this whole article has argued, the operation may leave back pain unchanged, which for some people was half of what they hoped to lose.

The alternatives are not nothing. Staying active, time, physical therapy, ordinary pain relief and, in some cases, an injection of anti-inflammatory medicine around the nerve root are all standard options, each with its own evidence and its own limits, and the right sequence is a conversation with the prescribing clinician rather than a rule.

The pros and cons therefore do not point one way. They point to a question: how severe is your leg pain, how long has it lasted, is anything getting weaker, and how much longer are you willing to wait to see whether your body finishes the job itself?

Can I run with an L5-S1 herniated disc, before or after surgery?

L5-S1 is the lowest disc in the spine, sitting between the last lumbar vertebra and the sacrum, and it is one of the two most common sites for a herniation. A disc at this level typically irritates the S1 nerve root, which is why symptoms often run down the back of the leg into the calf and the outer edge of the foot, and why the calf muscles and the ankle reflex are what the examiner checks.

Running before surgery is a matter of what the nerve tolerates. The NHS and Mayo Clinic both advise staying active with a herniated disc rather than resting in bed, but staying active means walking, gentle movement and normal daily tasks, not necessarily high-impact sport. Running loads the discs with each footstrike and, in an acutely irritated nerve, frequently reproduces the shooting pain. If running makes the leg pain worse during or after, that is useful information rather than a challenge to push through. If a new weakness appears, such as difficulty rising onto the toes on one side, stop and be assessed.

After L5-S1 herniated disc surgery, running returns on a schedule set by your team, and the general shape of it is consistent across major centers: walking from day one, progressive strengthening over the first several weeks, and a graded return to impact activity once the incision has healed, core and hip control are restored, and the surgeon is satisfied the disc defect has had time to seal. Many programs bring people back to running over a period of a few months rather than a few weeks, but the specific timing is individual and depends on what was found at surgery.

Runners who do best are usually the ones who treat the return as training, not as a test. Short, flat, slow, with rest days, and with the leg as the referee.

How long does it take for a herniated disc to heal, with or without surgery?

A herniated disc does not heal the way a cut heals. The displaced material is gradually broken down and reabsorbed by the body’s immune cells, the inflammation around the nerve settles, and the tear in the outer ring scars over. The disc itself does not regain its original height or water content. What heals, in the sense people mean, is the nerve.

Without surgery, the NHS describes symptoms typically improving over about six weeks, and Mayo Clinic notes that most people with a herniated disc improve with conservative care and never need an operation. Improvement is usually gradual rather than sudden, and a meaningful minority still have symptoms at three months, which is roughly the point at which the surgical conversation becomes more active.

With surgery, the timeline splits into the three tracks this article keeps returning to. The incision and the disturbed muscle take a few weeks to settle. Leg pain often changes within days. Nerve recovery for numbness and true weakness runs over months, and MedlinePlus is frank that some numbness or weakness may not fully return, particularly when the nerve was compressed for a long time before decompression. This is the main clinical argument for not waiting indefinitely when a deficit is present.

The Peul trial offers a useful anchor. At one year, people who had early surgery and people who started with prolonged conservative care had arrived at similar levels of recovery. Surgery changed the shape of the year, front-loading the relief, more than it changed where the year ended.

So the honest answer to how long is: weeks for most, months for nerve function, and a year before anyone should draw a final line under the outcome. Anyone who quotes a single number is leaving out two of the three.

What people often get wrong about herniated disc surgery

The myths around this operation are remarkably durable, partly because patient stories tend to be either triumphant or bitter, and neither tells you much about averages.

The first mistake is expecting the back to be fixed. The operation decompresses a nerve. If your dominant complaint is an aching low back rather than a leg on fire, a discectomy is aimed at the wrong target, and a good surgeon will say so.

The second is believing that surgery is the only way a herniated disc gets better. The opposite is closer to the truth. The natural history is favorable for most people, which is exactly why the trials found the two paths converging over a year.

The third is the reverse error: assuming that waiting is always safer. For someone with progressive weakness, a foot that is starting to drop, or any bladder or bowel change, delay risks permanent nerve damage, and guidelines treat those situations as reasons to operate promptly rather than reasons to be patient.

The fourth is that numbness will vanish when the pain does. It may, over months, and it may not entirely. People who know this in advance tend to describe the residual patch as a footnote; people who did not sometimes describe the same patch as a failure.

The fifth is that the disc is removed. In almost all cases only the escaped fragment is taken out, and the disc remains, which is also why it can herniate again.

And the sixth, quieter mistake is judging the result too early or too late. Judge the leg in weeks. Judge the nerve in months. Judge the back on its own terms, because it was never the main character in this particular operation.

Questions to ask your care team before deciding

A consultation goes better when you arrive with questions that sort your symptoms into the columns that matter. These are the ones spine clinicians most often wish patients would ask.

• Which of my symptoms is this operation designed to relieve, and which is it unlikely to change?
• Does my scan match my symptoms in level and side, and how confident are you in that match?
• Is there any sign of nerve damage on examination, and does that change how urgent the decision is?
• If I wait another few weeks, what would make you recommend operating sooner, and what would make you recommend continuing to wait?
• What are the specific risks of this operation in my case, and how would we recognize a complication early?
• How likely is a recurrence at this level, and what would we do if it happened?
• What restrictions should I expect in the first weeks, and when would you expect me to return to my particular job and activities?
• What will physical therapy involve, and when does it start?
• Which symptoms after surgery should prompt a call the same day?

Bring a plain description of what the pain has stopped you doing, because that is the outcome you are really buying. A surgeon who hears that you cannot sit through a work meeting or lift a toddler can talk to you about whether the operation is likely to return those things, and how fast.

Write down the answers. People remember roughly half of what is said in a medical consultation, and the details about which symptom is expected to change and when are exactly the ones that matter three weeks later when you are wondering whether a tingling foot is a problem or a process. The decision, in the end, is a shared one, and it rests with you and the team who have examined you.

When to call your doctor after herniated disc surgery

Most of the odd sensations in the weeks after a discectomy are part of an irritated nerve settling down. A few are not, and the difference matters enough to put on the refrigerator door.

Call emergency services or go to an emergency department immediately if you develop new difficulty controlling your bladder or bowels, numbness around the groin, buttocks or inner thighs, or sudden weakness in both legs. These are the signs of cauda equina syndrome, compression of the nerve bundle at the base of the spine, which the NHS lists as a medical emergency whether it occurs before or after surgery.

Call your surgical team the same day if you notice any of the following:

• Leg pain that had eased and then returns steadily or becomes worse than before surgery, which can signal a recurrent herniation or bleeding near the nerve
• New or worsening weakness in the leg or foot, such as the foot slapping or dragging when you walk
• Redness, swelling, warmth, increasing pain or any discharge at the incision, or a fever
• Clear fluid leaking from the wound, or a severe headache that is worse when upright, both of which can indicate a leak of spinal fluid
• Pain, swelling or tenderness in the calf, or sudden shortness of breath or chest pain, which raise concern for a blood clot

For anything less dramatic, a new tingling, a sore spot after a longer walk, a stiff morning, keep a note and mention it at your follow-up visit. Your team would rather hear about a symptom that turns out to be nothing than miss the one that was not. No article can examine you; the people who can are the ones to call.

Frequently asked questions

What is life like after herniated disc surgery?

For most people whose surgery was done for leg-dominant pain, daily life gradually stops being organized around the spine, with sitting, driving and sleeping returning to normal over weeks to months. Long-term trial follow-up shows sustained gains in function after surgery, and substantial improvement in those who chose nonsurgical care too. Some people keep a small numb patch, and a minority have ongoing back pain or a recurrence that needs its own plan.

How long is microdiscectomy recovery time?

Microdiscectomy recovery time runs on several tracks. Incision soreness usually settles within a few weeks, leg pain often changes within days, and nerve recovery for numbness or weakness continues over months. Mayo Clinic describes a typical return to desk work in about 2 to 6 weeks and to heavy work in about 6 to 8 weeks, though your surgeon sets the timeline based on what was found and how you are progressing.

Are sciatica surgery outcomes better than waiting?

Faster, yes; better in the long run, not clearly. Two randomized trials found surgery relieved leg pain more quickly, and in SPORT the people who actually had surgery reported larger improvements in pain and function at follow-up. The Dutch trial found outcomes had converged by one year because most of the wait-first group recovered without an operation. The choice is largely about how long you are willing to remain in pain while nature does its work.

Is L5 S1 herniated disc surgery different from surgery at other levels?

The operation is essentially the same microdiscectomy, but the symptoms it targets differ by level. An L5-S1 herniation usually irritates the S1 nerve root, producing pain down the back of the leg into the calf and outer foot, and weakness pushing the foot down or rising on the toes. Because the S1 root controls the ankle reflex and calf strength, those are the functions your surgeon will track before and after surgery.

Why do I still have numbness after herniated disc surgery?

Because nerve fibers heal far more slowly than pain resolves. Removing the disc fragment stops the pressure immediately, so pain often fades within days, but sensory fibers that were damaged during weeks or months of compression must repair their insulation or regrow along the length of the leg, a process measured in months. MedlinePlus notes that some numbness may not fully return, particularly when compression was prolonged before surgery.

Will herniated disc surgery fix my back pain?

It may not, and that should be discussed before you consent. A discectomy relieves pressure on a nerve root, which is what causes leg pain; it does not treat the torn disc, the small joints or the muscles that generate most low back pain. Some people find their back settles once the leg stops hurting and they move normally again, while others have an excellent leg result and unchanged back pain.

Can a herniated disc come back after surgery?

Yes. Only the escaped fragment is usually removed, so the disc remains in place and can herniate again through the same weakened area, sometimes requiring a second operation. Cleveland Clinic notes that a disc that has herniated once can herniate again. A steady return of the original leg pain after a period of relief is the typical warning sign and should be reported to your surgical team promptly.

How long does it take for a herniated disc to heal without surgery?

The NHS describes symptoms of a slipped disc usually improving over about six weeks, and Mayo Clinic notes most people improve with conservative care and never need an operation. The herniated material is gradually reabsorbed and inflammation around the nerve settles, though the disc does not regain its original height. People still in significant pain at around 6 to 12 weeks are typically the ones for whom surgery is discussed.

What are the main risks of discectomy?

Mayo Clinic lists bleeding, infection, a leak of the fluid surrounding the nerves, and injury to nerves or blood vessels as recognized complications, each uncommon. Recurrent herniation at the same level and scar tissue around the nerve are additional possibilities over time. Because the condition often improves without surgery, these risks are weighed carefully against the severity and duration of your symptoms by your treating team.

When is herniated disc surgery urgent rather than optional?

Surgery moves from optional to urgent when nerve function is at stake. New bladder or bowel problems with numbness around the groin and buttocks suggest cauda equina syndrome, which the NHS treats as an emergency. Rapidly progressive leg weakness, such as a developing foot drop, is the other reason to operate promptly rather than continue waiting, because prolonged compression raises the risk of permanent damage.

References

• NHS: Slipped disc
• MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Diskectomy
• Cleveland Clinic: Herniated Disk

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.