Cervical Disc Compression — How I Help Patients Avoid Surgery

I want to tell you about a patient — I’ll call him Anthony, because that’s his name and he gave me permission. Years at a desk gave him cervical disc compression at C5/C6. Every orthopedist he saw recommended surgery. Every one.

He didn’t have surgery. Today he’s back to Muay Thai and road biking, pain-free.

What was actually going on

The disc in your neck is like a jelly donut — cartilage outside, a gel inside, sitting between the bones of your spine as a shock absorber. Years of forward head posture at a desk put uneven pressure on that disc, and it started pressing on the nerve. That can lead to pain, numbness, and tingling down the arm. On an MRI, it looked like a surgical case.

Why I push back on rushing to surgery

Here’s something really important: you have to be careful with MRIs. They give a lot of information, but they can give false positives — you find things on the scan that aren’t actually causing the symptoms. And that’s exactly why we see so many unnecessary surgeries. Surgery should be the last resort.

What we did instead

1. Proper consultation and physical examination — to confirm where the problem actually was, not just what the scan showed.
2. Flexion-distraction decompression — gentle table decompression to take pressure off the disc and the nerve.
3. Adjustments — restore movement, reduce the nerve pressure and the muscle tension.
4. Strength training — this is the part most people skip. We strengthened the deep neck and upper back to support the spine and hold the correction.

It took consistency. He did the work. And he kept his neck.

I’m not against surgery when it’s genuinely needed — sometimes it is. But it should be the last option, after a real, consistent trial of conservative care. Don’t let an MRI alone send you to the operating room.

Again, this is Dr. Kevin Tomassini. If this helped, share it with someone facing the same decision.