Back & Neck Pain: Treatment
The most common treatments for back pain include pain medications, anti-inflammatory drugs, steroid injections, applied heat or cold, rest, traction, and support.

Your physical therapist may suggest massage therapy or certain exercises and activities to stretch and strengthen your lower back muscles and help prevent further episodes.

While the majority of back pain sufferers will not require surgery, there are a number of surgical procedures that may be performed to provide relief to those patients who do not respond to the aforementioned therapies. These include:

• Diskectomy: removal of a herniated disk to relieve pressure on a nerve root.
• Laminectomy: removal of the lamina to make more room for the nerves.
• Spinal Fusion: placing a bone graft between two or more vertebrae, causing the vertebrae to grow together, or fuse.