The most common side effect to the spinal decompression is caused by the interference with critical  nerves or the spinal cord itself.  The most severe result of this mishap is paralysis.  Moderate discomfort that is caused by minimal damage to the nervous system may be numbness, either on the spine or in various parts of the body.

Pain is a common side effect to this minimally invasive surgery.  It is sometimes confused with a more serious condition.  While there is pain medication available to reduce the pain, it commonly persists quite heavily for the initial recovery time after your operation.

The nature of spinal surgery is a direct indication of what takes place.  There is a change made to the pressure on your spine.  This is done in a variety of ways.  One of the procedures used requires the insertion of ‘hardware,’ or metal braces to help fuse the segments of your spine together.  One rare side effect is the breaking or shifting of these braces prematurely.  This failure to a vertebrae that has not completed the fusion process is cause for a second surgery.   This side effect itself can lead to extreme pain, as a weak vertebrae is subject to shift.

It is important to note that this occurrence is extremely rare naturally.  Most reported cases of this tragedy were caused by external forces causing trauma to the recently operated spine.  Car wrecks, falls, and other unavoidable accidents have been mostly attributed to the cause of hardware failure.

Another potential side effect is transitional syndrome.  This is a case where the stress of your problem vertebrae for which you were originally seeking surgery was adopted by an adjacent vertebrae that causes more severe pain than before.  This side effect is most commonly caused by a fair mix of poor execution and natural reaction.  Although the process of transition can happen as a natural occurrence in the body, there are a fair amount of cases where the doctor’s carelessness caused the action.

It is important to be completely aware of the history of possible complaints that have been logged against your prospective operating physician.  Any practitioner who has has multiple patient complaints should be avoided.  It is possible to find physicians who have very clean records of success.  Complaints against hospitals are a matter of public safety and are therefore accessible for public viewing.

There are other available resources online that should help you with your search to find the perfect doctor to perform your spinal decompression.

Many doctors prefer to use a number of other treatments before recommending surgery. Fortunately, some are beginning to accept spinal decompression as a viable alternative. Aside from being less invasive, this procedure also addresses other factors that may not be possible to diagnose, let alone treat with a surgical procedure.  In particular, when a spinal disc, or a piece of bone pinches a nerve, it may also cut off some of the blood supply to other tissue in that area.   This may include bone tissue, as well as cartilage that will send off distress signals for months on end.  While the cessation of pain may be a relief, there is no telling how much hidden damage may have been caused by the compression and even people suffering with diabetes could find relief in spinal decompression therapy.

Many kinds of injuries can disrupt the normal alignment of the muscles and bone in your neck or spine.  After the initial pain goes away, you may develop sciatica months, or even years later.  Interestingly enough, even people with hip and shoulder pain often find out that the problem is located in the spine, or in the areas where the main nerve exits the spine.
A chiropractor can use certain spinal manipulations to realign your back, and relieve the pressure.   That said, if the case is more severe, or there are other joint complications, you may need to see an orthopedic specialist.  In most cases, they will wind up doing a lot of tests, and then give you all sorts of pain killers.

If you want to get out of the cycle of pain caused by sciatica, you should consider a number of different options.  While most doctors will tell you about surgery, cortisone shots, and pain killers, they may not tell you about a newer treatment.  Therefore, you should make it a point to ask about spinal decompression, as well as try to find out from other resources if it has the potential to be of help to you.