Background: Low back pain is the most common health problem in men and women between the ages of 20 and 50 years. The lumbar disc prolapse has a major role in this condition. Treatment is either conservative or surgical. The most common surgical interventions are either laminectomy or interlaminar approach.
Objective: To determine which is the best surgical approach for the patient according to his/her type of disc herniation.
Patients and methods: A comparative clinical study conducted in the Neurosciences Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq from January 2016 to January 2018. In this paper we evaluated the clinical outcome following both approaches
Results: We studied sixty cases; thirty-four patients had interlaminar approach for lumbar discectomy while twenty-six patients had laminectomy with discectomy.
Conclusion: Both methods can manage different types of lumbar disc prolapse, apart from far-lateral disc which favors laminectomy approach.
