Lumbar Stenosis
Low back pain is an extremely frequent outpatient complaint across all fields of medicine. Among its surgical causes, lumbar stenosis is one of the most commonly seen in the neurosurgeon’s clinic. In this chapter, the authors present a case of a patient with classic symptoms of neurogenic claudication who is found to have multilevel degenerative lumbar stenosis on imaging. The authors discuss the evaluation of such patients by examination and imaging, with attention given to important alternatives in the differential diagnosis. They describe the surgical management of lumbar stenosis by conventional open decompression as well as newer minimally invasive techniques. Finally, the authors discuss key aspects of postoperative and complication management.