SAN DIEGO -- Floyd Ross, 86, made it his mission to escape his agonizing back pain.

"I went to acupuncture. I went to chiropractors. I went to everything I could think of to try and eliminate the pain," Ross said.

He had a slip of the spine where the bone slipped one over the other.

Doctors said traditional back surgery was not possible because of his advancing age.

"Traditionally, he would have an incision that would be eight inches long in the back. It would remove all the muscles of the lumbar spine and it would require a blood transfusion, a stay in the ICU and a six week to three month recovery time," University of California San Diego neurosurgeon Dr. William Taylor said.

Ross found relief with a new procedure, called extreme lateral interbody infusion (XLIF).

Unlike traditional back surgery, the XLIF surgery accesses the spine through the patient's side -- avoiding major muscles and tissue in the back.

Sensors alert the surgeon if his probe is approaching one of the nerves running through the muscle, so he or she can steer around it.

The incision is also significantly smaller.

"He had an incision which was about three centimeters long," Ross said.

Patients like Ross often walk within a few days after the procedure.

"The person is going to recover more quickly and is going to return back to their normal activities, have less complications and get out of the hospital faster with less pain," Taylor said.

Two months after the procedure, Ross is back to his active life.

"I was on a 10-foot ladder picking peaches the other day," Ross said.

UCSD doctors say the new method of spine surgery has been used for a couple of years, but many doctors are still not familiar with it.

Tools used in this spine surgery, like the XLIF, are made by a San Diego company, called Nuvasive.