Thursday, March 1

Back Pain - the surgery question

It's estimated 80% of Americans will suffer back pain. The big question - when is it time for surgery?

Recently on our noon news we ran a national story on a procedure called the x-stop. I did that story with local doctors about 8 months ago. Seems the procedure is catching on. But even with the x-stop .. a titanium kind of spacer that's put between the angry disks and can be reversed, it's not clear how long it helps.

So what's a person in pain to do? This months Harvard Health Letter explores that.
It says: " Back surgery is an option for people with long-lasting pain due to herniated disks, spinal stenosis, or degenerative disease."
But the article also goes on to say there are questions if too many surgeries for degenerative disease are being performed and if you're suffering a herniated disk, surgical and nonsurgical treatments worked equally well.

As always, talk with your doctor.
If you've had the x-stop procedure and it's helped .. let me know .. just post a comment.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My husband, diagnosed late with Lyme and then secondarily (and most recently) with progressive MS has been through 3 back surgeries. Expert doctors who didn't neccessarily do anything wrong but just by such intrusive surgery in and of itself... I wonder if, had we used alternative means of managing the back pain caused by the two diseases instead of all this cutting and pasting and new metal rods and all if my husband's ability to walk and move and just live normally would be different and more manageable now. Could this procedure be used in such a case?

March 01, 2007 10:31 PM
Anonymous said...

ASK YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT AQUATHERAPY. It helps aches where you didn't know you had places...

March 15, 2007 4:48 PM

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