“What is the success rate of surgery for spinal stenosis?”

Surgery is highly successful in decompressing the nerves

Well, first, I have to know what you need surgery for. We don't do surgery for spinal stenosis. If you have leg pain from nerve root compression (radiculopathy), or your legs get weak and give out when you stand or walk from nerve compression (claudication), those symptoms can be alleviated with surgery to decompress the nerves. I do it minimally invasively so patients go home a few hours after surgery, and most are back to work in less than a week. By "success rate", I'm assuming you mean how likely is it that your symptoms will get better, because surgery is always 100% successful at taking the pressure off of the nerves. The success rate depends entirely on how much damage was done to the nerves before you had surgery. The more the nerves are damaged before surgery, the less likely you are to have improvement of the pain or neurologic function after surgery. If your nerves are compressed and you are losing function, then that will continue to get worse and worse without surgery. So the chance of feeling better with surgery is much better than the chance of feeling better without it. Hope that helps.