Overview
The multispecialty team in the Center for Spine Health at Cleveland Clinic in Florida provides comprehensive nonsurgical and surgical spine care. We conduct thorough assessments to accurately diagnose the root cause of your symptoms and create personalized treatment plans based on your needs.
You have convenient access to our spine experts across South Florida and the Treasure Coast. Our goal is to improve your quality of life, decrease pain and improve function with the most advanced, least invasive treatments available.
Spine Care: Why Choose Cleveland Clinic in Florida
When you choose Cleveland Clinic in Florida for spine care, you benefit from:
- Collaborative, coordinated care: Experts in pain management, sports medicine, physical medicine and rehabilitation, physical therapy and spine surgery all work together to care for you. This efficient, coordinated approach means you don’t have to wait for a referral to another specialist to get the quality care you need.
- Spine care for all ages: Our spine specialists treat all ages, from adolescents to geriatric patients. At Cleveland Clinic Weston Hospital, a fellowship-trained pediatric spine surgeon specializes in spine conditions and procedures that affect adolescents. We personalize each treatment plan, aiming to decrease recovery times and get you back to the activities you love quickly.
- Full range of treatments: We conduct thorough evaluations to find the right treatment plan for you, prioritizing a nonsurgical approach as much as possible. Our team offers a wide range of treatments to manage pain effectively, such as injections, spinal cord stimulators and radiofrequency ablation.
- Minimally invasive approaches: When surgery is the best treatment, we offer minimally invasive techniques that allow for less pain and faster healing. We use a range of advanced surgical technologies, including intraoperative navigation systems to improve accuracy and ultrasonic bone aspirators to decompress your spine more safely.
- Convenient access: We work with advanced practice providers (APPs) to increase access to care. Virtual visits allow you complete follow-up appointments from the comfort of wherever you choose.
- Expert second opinions: Our spine care center specialists regularly treat patients who come to us for second opinions. Our multispecialty approach means we can offer all nonsurgical, interventional and surgical treatments for spine problems. We recommend the treatment that’s most effective for your unique needs.
Spinal Conditions We Treat
Our team treats all types of back pain and neck pain, including:
- Arthritis of the spine, including osteoarthritis.
- Degenerative disc disease.
- Herniated discs.
- Spinal fractures, including compression fractures.
- Spinal stenosis.
- Spinal tumors.
- Spondylosis and spondylolisthesis.
We also provide treatment for spinal problems arising from nerve conditions, such as:
- Peripheral nerve injuries.
- Radiculopathy.
- Sciatica.
Adolescent and adult patients may come to us for treatment of spinal deformities, including:
- Kyphosis.
- Scoliosis in adults and adolescents.
Our experts also evaluate and treat a wide array of other spine-related conditions, including:
- Bursitis, including trochanteric bursitis.
- Carpal tunnel syndrome.
- Neurofibromatosis type 1, type 2 and schwannomas.
- Osteoporosis.
- Sacroiliitis.
- Spinal infections (vertebral osteomyelitis/discitis).
- Spinal instability.
- Syringomyelia.
Nonsurgical Spine Treatment
A sports medicine doctor starts your intake with a full assessment and diagnostic workup to find the root cause of any spinal problems. Depending on their findings, they may start nonoperative treatment or direct you to our spine surgeons for surgical evaluation. We aim to treat all conditions with nonsurgical methods first and only recommend surgery when we believe it to be the most effective treatment for your needs.
Nonsurgical spine care may include:
- Physical therapy: Physical therapists offer a variety of treatment methods designed to reduce pain, improve mobility and increase your overall function. Your treatment may include specific exercises, postural corrections, joint or soft tissue mobilization, manual therapies or other techniques. Learn more about rehabilitation and sports therapy.
- Alternative therapies: Some patients benefit from alternative therapies, such as massage or acupuncture. These treatments may relieve muscle stiffness, increase circulation and decrease pain.
- Medications: Depending on your symptoms, we may prescribe medications to reduce inflammation, relax your muscles and decrease pain.
- Epidural injections: We inject anti-inflammatory medicine into the epidural space, the area directly outside the sac of fluid surrounding your spinal cord. This medication helps reduce inflammation and relieve back pain.
- Facet joint injections: We inject an anesthetic, with or without a medication, into your facet joints, the joints between your spinal bones (vertebrae). Facet joints allow you to move your back and neck and provide spine stability.
- Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy: We inject injured or damaged tissue with a concentration of your own platelets. The injection helps to stimulate faster healing of injured joints, muscles, ligaments or tendons.
- Radiofrequency ablation: We use radiofrequency energy to apply heat to specific pain-causing nerves. The heat strategically destroys or deadens the nerve so it doesn’t send pain signals. Our specialists perform the Intracept procedure, an innovative approach that targets the main nerve running through your spine (basivertebral nerve) with radiofrequency energy.
- Steroid injections: We inject a corticosteroid medication directly into an affected joint to decrease inflammation and relieve pain. Steroid injections may effectively treat arthritis, bursitis and back pain.
- Trigger point injections: We may inject an anesthetic, with or without another medication, into painful knots called trigger points. Trigger point injections are often beneficial for myofascial pain, which affects your muscles and the connective tissue around your muscles (fascia).
Interventional Spine Treatment
Our pain management specialists may recommend interventional therapies when nonsurgical treatments don’t bring adequate relief. Interventional treatments are minimally invasive procedures that help to relieve pain. Interventional therapies may include:
- Spinal cord stimulation: Spinal cord stimulators use small electrical pulses to interfere with pain signals before they reach your brain. You start with a trial period of wearing the stimulator device outside your body. If the treatment works, we can permanently implant the device (pulse generator) beneath your skin. The pulse generator sends electrical pulses to electrodes placed strategically along your spine.
- ReActiv8 restorative neurostimulation therapy: Some people have chronic low back pain that stems from the multifidus muscles, the small bundles of muscles and tendons on either side of your spine. With ReActiv8, we use minimally invasive techniques to implant a small neurostimulation device in your lower back. The device attaches to wires that lead directly to the nerves that control your multifidus muscle. These wires send small electrical pulses to the multifidus muscle to relieve pain.
Spine Surgery
Sometimes, surgery is the most effective treatment to reduce pain and relieve the symptoms of a spinal condition. We typically recommend surgery only after trying nonoperative and/or interventional treatments. Procedures may include:
- Discectomy: We remove part or all of a damaged or diseased disc. The disc is the spongy, rubbery pad between each vertebra.
- Disc replacement: We replace a damaged disc with an artificial one.
- Spinal fusion: Your surgeon removes a spinal disc, then joins (fuses) the surrounding vertebrae with metal devices, screws or bone grafts.
- Foraminotomy: We strategically enlarge the opening where your nerve roots exit your spinal canal to relieve pressure on your nerves.
- Kyphoplasty and vertebroplasty: These procedures treat compression fractures by inserting a balloon-like device into your vertebra (kyphoplasty) and then filling the space with cement (vertebroplasty) to stabilize it.
- Laminectomy: The surgeon removes bone spurs (bony growths) along with all or part of the back portion of one or more spinal bones (lamina). This helps to reduce pressure on your spinal cord and nerves.
- Osteotomy: Your surgeon cuts and reshapes one of your bones to improve bone alignment.
Minimally invasive spine surgery
We perform most spine surgeries as minimally invasive operations. Minimally invasive spine surgery offers the same exceptional results as open surgery while providing benefits such as:
- Less pain.
- Lower risk of complications.
- Minimized damage to surrounding tissue.
- Quicker recovery time.
- Shorter hospital stays.
Our surgeons use multiple state-of-the-art tools, such as intraoperative imaging and ultrasonic bone aspirators, to perform minimally invasive procedures. These techniques allow us to operate safely and effectively through the smallest incisions.
Clinical Trials for Spine Treatments
Our spine care team, along with researchers at our Florida Research and Innovation Center, lead clinical trials and study the newest advances in spine treatment. Talk to your doctor to see if you may be eligible to participate in a clinical trial.
Appointments & Locations
Make an appointment at a Cleveland Clinic location in Florida or schedule a virtual visit.
