Foraminoplasty
 

Can anyone tell me more about this procedure? I am looking into it from a suggestion of someone here. It seems an interesting alternative to fixing the problem of annular tears and I've heard next to nothing about it. Any information greatly appreciated!

I had never heard of anything besides ADR and Fusion for high grade annular tears.

Foraminoplasty is like an endoscopic foraminotomy or discectomy. It's a minimally invasive procedure to explore and decompress exiting nerve roots, remove disc herniations, etc...

Like other discectomies, IMHO, they are efforts to salvage a disc without doing more invasive surgeries like ADR or fusion. If the disc and posterior elements are not too severely compromised, these procedures stand a good chance of providing long-term relief. If they system is too far down the degenerative cascade, the less invasive surgeries stand much less chance of long term success. (We learned this the hard way following my wife's successful endoscopic discectomy. 2.5 months later, she started with leg symptoms on the 'other side'. As fortold by Bertagnoli, the disc was too severely compromised prior to the discectomy to have a reasonable chance of surviving.)

Mark