The American Association of Retired Persons published an article in the July 2011 Edition of it’s magazine about the “4 Surgeries” to avoid.

It immediately caught my attention because one of my roles in the clinic is advocating for safe and effective non-surgical treatments for back pain, disc pain, stenosis, and sciatica.

When I opened up the article I saw that one of the surgeries they were warning their members to avoid was a surgery called Spinal Fusion for Spinal Stenosis.

This is a very common surgery for chronic back pain, disc pain, and sciatica. I come in contact with patients everyday suffering from both the complications of the spinal fusion surgery and also just complete failure of the surgery to provide any relief for their back or leg pain.

For those of you unfamiliar with spinal fusion, a surgeon places bone grafts that “weld” two or more vertebrae together to prevent motion and stop pain. It is extremely invasive.

A recent study of medicare patients showed that the number of Spinal Fusion surgery had increased 1,400 percent between 2002 and 2007 although the risks associated with this surgery are very high.

Risks associated with spinal fusion surgery include:

• patients who undergo the surgery are three times more likely to suffer life-threatening complications than those who underwent less invasive surgery.
• most fusion patients experience no more relief from their chronic back pain than those who had physical and behavioral therapy.
• “There is even some evidence that [complex fusion surgery] is worse than other surgeries,” says Floyd J. Fowler Jr., Ph.D., senior scientific advisor for the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making (FIMDM). “The vertebrae right above and below the fusion have to do a lot more bending, and it puts stress on your back above and below.”

According to Arnold Weil, M.D., clinical assistant professor of rehabilitation medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, “probably less than 5 percent of all back pain requires surgery.”

Surgery is a last resort and given all of the risks this type of surgery shouldn’t be an option at all.

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Source: http://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-05-2011/4-surgeries-to-avoid.3.html