The soft part squeezes out and pushes against a nerve. Traditional treatment is fusion. The soft disc is removed entirely. A piece of bone is taken from the patient's hip or a bone bank. It is implanted between the two vertebrae and the three pieces grow together.
Movement is limited and recovery is a few months.
The injury can happen out of the blue or it may be caused by an injury, an accident or a fall. Surgeons at UCLA are treating patients in a way that reduces the time of recovery and does not affect their ability to move. The procedure is called anterior cervical foraminotomy. The surgeon makes a tiny incision in the front of the neck, removes a piece of bone about the size of a thumb nail to get access to the damaged disc. He then goes next to the nerve and removes the tiny piece of disc that's pressing on the nerve.