How to Get Care. You can ask for a referral from your primary care doctor, your mental health care provider, or your health plan. In some plans, you may be able to make an appointment directly with a mental health care provider.
Patients with bigger defects or who have failed other types of surgery may be eligible for allograft transplants of donor bone and cartilage (Figure 3). In this method, cartilage defects are treated with tissue that is donated for transplantation, much like a liver or heart transplant.
It is minimally invasive surgery because the surgical incision is small, surgical dissection is minimal, bone removal is minimal, and disc removal is limited to the ruptured portion of the disc. It still achieves the goal of surgery that the classic conventional lumbar discectomy accomplishes.