Conservative treatment is primarily performed for the treatment of patients with lumbar disc herniation (LDH), but if it does not respond, surgical treatment can be performed. Surgical intervention has a positive effect on the rapid improvement of LDH symptoms. However, the effectiveness of surgical versus conservative treatment for LDH is controversial, especially regarding long-term effects. Recently, a treatment using platelet-rich plasma (PRP), bone marrow aspirate concentrate (BMAC), low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS), etc., has been actively conducted as a treatment to avoid side effects of surgery and promote tissue regeneration. In this paper, the literature evaluating the effectiveness of non-surgical treatment options is reviewed with an emphasis on the effectiveness of clinical application. Several clinical studies have shown that PRP, biomaterials, BMAC, and LIPUS treatment promote tissue regeneration and alleviate symptoms. Although PRP-applied studies have suggested disc height changes, cell therapy and LIPUS treatment have many shortcomings in clinical aspects of tissue regeneration. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a unified, safe protocol and standardize the method of presenting results to confirm the clinical effect of the treatment for impaired intervertebral regeneration in patients with intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD), including LDH.
Keywords: BMAC; LIPUS; PRP; biomaterials; intervertebral discs degeneration; lumbar disc herniation.