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Think Twice About
Surgery
for Back Pain
Robert Filice, M.D. Former staff physician
A recent issue of the
medical journal “Spine”
reported the findings of a study of long term patient satisfaction with
their back surgeries compared with physician expectations for the results.
What was found was that 40% of patients reported virtually
no difference in the severity of
their
back pain when rated one year after surgery. Overall, the surgeons
performing these procedures predicted that 99% of the patients would have
some improvement from the surgery.
What does this study
teach us? First, surgeon’s are overly and inappropriately optimistic about
the results they can obtain with
Back Surgery. Since the scalpel is the
surgeon’s only tool, and since surgery is a serious matter, it is not
surprising that such a high percentage of surgeon’s predicted such a high
expectation of benefits. How else could you justify a surgical procedure to
a prospective patient? The problem is that back surgery fails to improve the
original symptoms in almost one half of the cases rated one year post
operatively. One reason for the discrepancy is that patients in private
practices may not be asked to return for follow-up evaluations, or if they
do return, results are not tabulated in a scientific manner. Therefore, if a
surgeon quotes you a 99% chance of improvement from a proposed surgical
procedure, you would want to ask him how he arrived at those results and
whether in fact all of his patients are actually followed over time with
results tabulated in a scientific manner. Or is he quoting results from
published studies rather than his own personal data?
That brings up the second problem. Why do so many patients fail to benefit
from technically correctly performed surgery? By far the most common reason
is misdiagnosis of the cause of the pain. As we have reported many times
before, just because a disk bulge is visible on an
MRI,
that doesn’t necessarily mean it is the cause of the patients
sciatic or
back pain.
The problem may arise from the
sacroiliac
ligaments, in which case there can be no hope of improvement from a
microdiscectomy.
Thus another question you might want to ask your surgeon is "How can you be
sure that my pain arises from the area you are wanting to operate on?” Also
ask, “What other areas or conditions might produce a similar pain pattern
and render the operation you propose useless?” If he says there are no other
conditions that could cause your problem, there is a 50/50 or better chance
that he is wrong. Most surgeons know nothing about
ligament dysfunction.
My advice here is that patients not agree to surgical procedures without an
evaluation by a competent
Prolotherapy doctor. Most low back conditions,
including disk bulges, can be successfully treated with
Prolotherapy. Except
under the most urgent and dire circumstances, unless you’ve had a
Prolotherapy evaluation, and possibly a trial of
Prolotherapy treatments,
you should not entertain the idea of back surgery.
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Ross Hauser, M.D.
Caring
Medical and Rehabilitation Services
Dr.
Hauser received his M.D. from the University of Illinois, Chicago; completed his
residency at Loyola-Hines VA-Marianjoy Hospitals in Physical Medicine and
Rehabilitation; and received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Dr. Hauser is one of the leading
experts in the treatment of chronic pain and sports injuries with
Prolotherapy.
He, along with his wife Marion, have written seven books on the
topic of Prolotherapy, a comprehensive book on the natural medicine
approach to cancer, as well as a myriad of articles and newsletters
for the general public. Read more about
Ross Hauser MD
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