The herniated disc operation to which the King It is more common than it might seem at first. 90% of the world population suffers or will suffer from back pain at some point in their lives, of greater or lesser intensity and more or less duration. You have to thank those pains, since they are really alarm signals that our body emits. Its primary function, although it may not seem like it, is not to disturb, but to protect. Just as a smoke alarm protects your home from fire, pain warns you that something abnormal and potentially dangerous is going on inside your body.
Where does the pain come from? There are many causes that cause it, from the sprain or twisting of the muscles or ligaments in this area to a herniated disc, disc degeneration, fibromyalgia, inappropriate sitting postures, excessive efforts…
If a vertebral joint loses its normal mobility, movement is prevented. movement and disk health deteriorates. Like a wet sponge, a healthy disc is flexible. A dry sponge is hard and rigid and can break easily.
In a ‘gross way’, this is the cause that has led to this Sunday the King has to go through the operating room again, this time to undergo surgery for a herniated disc. An operation that will be added to the long list of interventions that the monarch has had to undergo due to various injuries.
The pathology of herniated disc, both at the cervical and lumbar level, has a great prevalence in our society, being the main cause of pain in people under 45 years of age. It consists of the displacement of the intervertebral disc from its usual location, being able to injure adjacent structures, mainly of a neurological type.
The usual symptoms are low back pain radiating to the legs, or cervical pain radiating to the neck, shoulders, and arms. Its treatment has classically been related to surgery.
As has happened with Don Juan Carlos, the progressive loss of strength in the legs caused by by a herniated disc is one of the symptoms that induce doctors to operate on this type of injury, as explained by Carlos Villas, professor of Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology at the University of Navarra, who points out that “nothing offers better results than those give the surgery.”
These interventions require a period of a month and a half to three months for the disc to heal correctly -during that time, it is advisable not to perform physical activity or bend at the waist- and the subsequent rehabilitation is based on strengthening the leg that has suffered loss of strength, as well as the abdominal and back muscles with the help of a lumbar belt and a corset.
The herniated disc supposes the exit of a fragment of an intervertebral disc It compresses the adjacent nerve and causes pain. The discs of the spinal column fulfill the function of cushioning the pressure between one bone and another, they serve as a connecting element and provide stability, but throughout life they wear out. In this sense, a herniated disc in the lumbosacral spine -the one suffered by the King- can affect the last or penultimate album in the column.
“If the hernia is located in the last disc, it is normal for the patient to feel pain that goes from the buttock to the heel behind the leg with a tingling sensation in the little toes,” says Villas. On the contrary, when it affects the penultimate disc, the pain is usually felt along the back of the leg, outside the thigh and calf up to the instep, and causes the sensation of having the thumb numb.