Brief Answer:
Early conservative management.

Detailed Answer:
Hello there
Welcome to healthcaremagic.

I am Dr.Senduran,General physician hope to answer your query.

Cervical spondylosis(Degenerative disc disease of cervical spine) --- mainly due to ageing.Symptoms like neck pain,stiffness etc which you are experiencing doesn't get relieved by medications only.

A combination of Supportive care Including physiotherapy and medications would be needed to effectively treat the symptoms,control the progression of disease and improve the quality of life..

Supportive care:
1)Physiotherapy in the form of neck(Cervical) traction with weights(usually needed when severity of symptoms Is moderate)
2)Wearing soft neck braces for short term relief.
3)Hot fomentation or ice pack application

Medications:
1) for mild grade of pain--- Tylenol(OTC drug) should be enough
2)For neck stiffness --- muscle relaxant drugs like cyclobenzaprine under prescription
3)For severe pain --opioid analgesic like vicodin under prescriptionwould be helpful.

For physiotherapy--exercises,neck traction etc..You would be referred to physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist.

Thus to conclude early conservative management (Supportive care+Medications) should be enough to effectively treat and control the progression of degenerative disease.If management is delayed,this would lead to complications for which surgery has to be done.

Hope this information helps you.If any concerns, don't hesitate to ask.

Take care.Wish you good health.

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Brief Answer:
Surgical success depends on the level of involvement

Detailed Answer:
Hello again,
Thanks for the follow up query.

Actually treatment depends on various factors like disc status,supportive ligament status,any extra bone formation,vertebral body status,and mainly level of involvement etc.

If one or two vertebra is involved,then the success rate of surgical procedures increases and the recurrence of the symptoms would be very less.Surgery is done mainly aiming at the decompression of nerve root/fibers like foraminectomy,discectomy(herniating disc) with or without inter vertebral body fusion called arthrodesis.

But if a multilevel involvement(i.e many adjacent vertebra's) involved,the success rate of such procedures seems to be poor.Also studies showing,that a possibility of recurrent long term symptoms is likely,especially with surgery involves arthrodesis.Also surgery could also be multistep procedure and can affect the quality of life

However if the spinal cord is getting compressed in a short duration of disease,surgery should be performed..

MRI cervical spine would help accurately staging the level and severity of the disease which your future doctor may ask if he need based on the physical exam mainly..

Early diagnosis and conservative management most of the time would be enough to prevent such surgical procedures.

If you have been suffering from neck stiffness for just few weeks,my suspect this might be just mild to moderate degree of disease for which an effective conservative management as discussed would be a better way to go..

Hope this answers your query..
If still any concern,reply back or close this discussion and rate my answer..

Wish you a speedy recovery and good health
Take care.

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