Bad Backs Discussion Forum

One of my known person have had sciatica for going on two years now.His doctor has prescribed a pain medication and it helps but the pain comes again in severe way.Since he works from 9am-5pm he really hate going work because of unbearable pain.What is the most common cause of Sciatica Pain? What else he can do for further treatment?Any surgery recommended ?

I was dealing with quite severe sciatica symptoms for last two years due to two herniated disks L4/L5 and L5/S1.
The only thing which helped me to get under control is combination of accupuncture with electro-therapy. In the beginning it was accu plus Tens devices , that did work but quite slowly . Issues were resolved in a couple of months while doing regular weekly visits. Though quite recently this combo stopped working for me. Luckily I found specialist who combined accupuncture with electrotherapy working on deeper laying muscles. My last episode started about 2 months ago and it got progressively worse no matter what I was doing: stretches, osteo treatments, pills you name it. By the end of it I could barely walk 10 meters while being on pain killers. And it took only one visit to the guy to eliminate it all. Of cause it need to be continued by it shows that indeed there is light at the end of the tunnel and surgery is indeed the last option. If interested can give you further details.