A percutaneous discectomy can be performed using various described techniques to decompress the contained injured jelly-like nucleus pulposus of a painful disc. This technique can be achieved with manual, radio-frequency ablation, laser, or automated discectomy following a diagnostic discogram.

Discography allows one to indirectly visualize the internal morphological structure of a disc to determine if the injured jelly-like nucleus pulposus is contained by the doughnut-like annulus or slipped. The contained injured jelly-like nucleus pulposusis amenable to percutaneous discectomy.