I am little confused by what my spine surgeon told me. I had an L5 - S1 Plif w/ instrumentation surgery in 2004 seen some significant improvement till about 2 yrs ago. I started have leg pains and uti infections again. Now I can't sit more then a few minutes in a hard chair. At this point the Surgeon who I trust says he wants to do an ALIF with a infuse cage and take a peek at the PLIF. He stated he will clean out out of the the stuff and add this cage. During a PLIF isn't the disc all removed? Or is just a portion removed. At the time I didn't ask what stuff he was going to remove. Does the plif depend on the anterior portion of the annulus to remain stable? Or is their cages added during PLIF he needs to remove.

Anybody else had the PLIF then a ALIF and is it as bad, better or worse then the PLIF for recovery. I am not looking forward to another back surgery.

His primary diagnose psuedoathroscopy(false joint) He says the fusion looks good from xray.