Compression Fracture Treatment: How Kyphoplasty Alleviates Back Pain

Back pain is a huge issue — over a third of adults have had back pain in the last six months. Typically, you can nurse a tweaked muscle to health and start feeling better within days. 

But what happens when your back pain is the result of a cracked and broken spine?

In this blog, Drs. John Yoo and Benjamin Wilson, of Vascular & Interventional Specialists in Fort Worth, Texas, discuss compression fractures and how kyphoplasty can correct them. 

Behind the scenes of your compression fracture

Compression fractures are a type of hairline break in a vertebra (a spine bone) that eventually causes the vertebrae to collapse. The result is significant pain, stiffness, and decreased mobility. Many with compression fractures struggle with poor posture and height loss. This can result in trouble breathing and other respiratory issues.

You’re most likely to develop a compression fracture in the middle (thoracic) part of your spine, particularly the lower thoracic area. 

Compression fractures most often stem from osteoporosis, a condition that weakens your bones, but they can also occur after trauma, such as a slip-and-fall accident or car accident. 

When a compression fracture is causing your back pain, you MAY benefit from a kyphoplasty procedure 

Let us talk about kyphoplasty

In some cases, compression fractures heal on their own with the help of conservative treatments like bracing, rest, and pain medication. However, many compression fractures, especially those that develop from osteoporosis or significant trauma, need more intervention. 

One of the best treatments for compression fractures is kyphoplasty. 

During kyphoplasty, we can minimize vertebral body height loss.

First, we clean and prepare the treatment site and administer moderate sedation and a local anesthetic to keep you completely comfortable. 

Then, we create a small incision (only about a half-inch long) in your back. Through that incision, we carefully guide a deflated balloon into your collapsed vertebra. 

We inflate the balloon to restore lost vertebral height and inject medical bone cement into the space. The hardened bone cement keeps the vertebra at its corrected height and stabilizes and repairs painful fractures. 

It’s possible to have compression fractures at several levels of your spine, and we may treat more than one affected vertebra during your procedures. 

What about vertebroplasty?

If you’ve gone down the rabbit hole of compression fracture treatment, you’ve likely found kyphoplasty’s cousin, vertebroplasty. 

Vertebroplasty is similar, except we don’t use a balloon before injecting bone cement. 

Vertebroplasty is helpful if you have a compression fracture and your vertebra hasn’t fully collapsed yet. During your consultation and evaluation, we carefully consider your symptoms and the extent of your fracture before recommending either kyphoplasty or vertebroplasty. 

Life after kyphoplasty

Kyphoplasty is an outpatient procedure, so you can return home the same day after we’ve observed you for a couple of hours. You can walk to your car, but you should have a friend or family member drive you home. 

Many of our patients return to work and their daily routine the next day, but you may also want to take some extra time off to rest. Whenever you decide to return to your normal rhythm, expect a significant improvement in mobility. 

You fully recover in about 4-6 weeks, but you should notice pain relief almost immediately or within a day or two.

Avoiding compression fractures in the future

We can’t guarantee you won’t ever sustain another compression fracture, but there are things to reduce your risk. 

If you want to take care of your spine, we recommend:

• Treatment of osteoporosis, including taking calcium and vitamin D.
• Strengthening your back muscles
• Improving balance
• Avoiding falls
• Doing weight-bearing exercises
• Eating a healthy diet
• Quitting smoking and avoiding secondhand smoke
• Limiting alcohol consumptions 

Ready to feel less pain and heal at the same time? Kyphoplasty may be your best path forward, and your first step is to schedule a consultation with our experts. Call our friendly staff at 817-321-0951 or use our online booking tool to schedule an appointment today.