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Spine surgery -- why you sometimes don't need to rush off for an operation

Surgery for the spine is something many of us will undergo at some stage. The statistics are very firm about this. It is estimated that in the US 4.6 million people will have to have spine surgery in our life time, and around 530,000 spine operations were performed in in 1999 alone.

Fortunately, for most patients the operations suceed with 70 percent able to return to their normal workplaces and daily routines and even more needing no more of their pain medicine.

Pain in the back is the first sign of the need for surgery, just like people say.

Those over, say, 50 will almost inevitablity have some back pain as old knocks and years of maintaining wrong posture eventually catch up on them.

Don't rush in to it, however. For a starter, it will be expensive. And, of course, often pain stems from conditions like inflammation of the soft tissue, spasms in the muscles, or arthritis. For these conditions you will not need surgery. A physiotherapist or someone like a acupuncture or massage expert will often be able to help.

When the back pain remains, determining if surgery is needed by using traditional examinations and x-rays, rather than a costly, modern MRI scan, is probably enough because these will give the doctors enough information in 85 percent of cases.

Of course, once it is realized that surgery will be necessary then the MRI scan will give your doctor essential information about your back.

You ought to discuss those MRI images with the surgeon and also get a second opinion, however, because five years after surgery people who had no surgery exhibit similar levels of relief from pain and freedom to move as those who did.

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Len McGrane has written widely on spine surgery and what you can do to avoid it.

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