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FAILED BACK SURGERY SYNDROME: TIME TO GET TOUGH ON USELESS OPERATIONS

(This article originally appeared on line at the highly informative www.redflagsweekly.com)

Once a scream, unfortunately still a scream. It's called "Failed Back Surgery Syndrome," and it refers to the 10 — 40 percent of patients who have terrible pain and functional problems after back surgery. Run a "Google" web search and you will find numerous references to this "syndrome." The same goes for a more scientific Pub Med search. In fact, there is a considerable medical literature on the subject, including various commentaries on the causes of the "syndrome," including the "unfortunate response of the body to the trauma of surgery," the "scarring of nerve roots," and the simple fact that surgery may not "address all the causes of the back pain."

According to some legal experts, failed back surgery is not a "rewarding" area of legal pursuit because it is difficult to attribute the "syndrome" to medical malpractice.

Well, here's another way of looking at the available data: the number of surgeries for low-back pain alone runs at more than 200,000 annually. How many of these are unnecessary? There is no easy answer and that is part of the problem; while there were strong warnings from an expert panel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 1994 that "surgery has been found to be helpful in only 1 in 100 cases of low back problems," and "in some people, surgery can even cause more problems," there is insufficient surveillance and research feedback today to keep control of too-quick-on-the-draw physicians causing "Unnecessary Back Surgery Syndrome."

http://www.redflagsweekly.com/scream/scream.html#useless

http://www.spine-health.com/topics/surg/failed_back/failed_back01.html  

http://www.chiroweb.com/archives/11/10/25.html

http://www.mychiro.com/health/index.php?p=113

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