Rehabilitation after Surgical Intervention on Patients with Disc Herniation

Disc herniation is pathologically divided into four stages of herniated nucleus pulposus: 1) bulging, 2) protrusion, 3) extrusion, 4) sequestration. The most important symptom of disc herniation is pain. Patients with symptoms undergoing urgent surgical intervention are 2% of the total. The aim of this study is to establish the efficiency of the physical therapy applied to patients after disc herniation surgery. The research covered 89 patients who had undergone lumbar spine surgery – 47 (or 52,8%) women and 42 (or 47,2%) men. The data was processed through basic descriptive statistical parameters: frequencies and percentage. The non-parametric methods that were applied were the χ2 test and the Mann-Whitney U test. The following conclusions can be drawn from the obtained data: disc herniation was most often located in L5-S1 in 47,2% of the cases, then in L4-L5 in 46%, and in L3-L4 in 6,7%; in 51,68% of the cases, the disc herniation was located on the right side, and in 48,3% on the left side; the muscle grade before dorsiflexion surgery was 1 in 2,2% of the patients, 2 in 5,6%, 3 in 10,1%, and 4 in 82,0%; the muscle grade after dorsiflexion surgery was 2 in 1,1% of the respondents, 3 in 6,7%, 4+ in 22,5%, and 5 in 69,7%; the muscle grade before plantarflexion surgery was 2 in 5,6% of the respondents, 3 in 7,9%, and 4- in 86,5%; the muscle grade after plantarflexion surgery was 3 in 3,4% of the respondents, 4 in 14,6%, and 5 in 82,0%.