Avoid Back Surgery With Chiropractic Treatment

In our Cary chiropractic clinic, we see a large number of patients who are struggling with back pain, and some of these patients have been informed they might need surgery to recover. Thankfully, Swiss Spine Clinic has helped many people get pain relief without the need for any type of surgery. The scientific literature confirms the results we see in our office. One research study published in the medical journal Spine found that consulting with a chiropractor as your first move in overcoming with your back problems may actually keep you off of the operating table.

In this report, medical experts from Dartmouth reviewed statistics from 1,885 workers from Washington state who first saw either an orthopedic surgeon or a chiropractic doctor for their back-related issues. They then examined three years' worth of follow-up medical information to determine whether the patients wound up having back surgery in an effort to correct the problem.

What the authors found was that 42.7% of the patients who first saw a surgeon for their back pain ended up with surgery in that 3-year time frame, whereas only 1.5 percent of those who first saw a chiropractor had the same fate. The authors wrote:

"Even after controlling for injury severity and other measures, workers with an initial visit for the injury to a surgeon had almost nine times the odds of receiving lumbar spine surgery compared to those seeing primary care providers, whereas workers whose first visit was to a chiropractor had significantly lower odds of surgery."

These are impressive findings. Consulting with a chiropractor dramatically decreases your odds of having back surgery, plus the chiropractic patients in this scientific study "had lower odds of chronic work disability" and they also had fewer expensive MRI tests.

Let's also take into consideration this important point: this study was performed by orthopedic surgeons from Dartmouth College, and published in the world's most distinguished medical journal on spinal injury.

The Problems with Surgery

Any surgical procedure has risks, but a serious problem linked to spinal surgery is that there's a very high rate of failure. In an important analysis in the European Spine Journal, researchers wrote:

"Failed back surgery is a problem that has become sufficiently widespread to even warrant its own special conferences, with recent reviews reporting failure rates ranging from 5 to 50%."

The authors of this same study concluded:

"It is extremely difficult to identify unequivocal predictor factors that can be used to accurately predict the outcome of surgery."

As a chiropractor, Swiss Spine Clinic believes that surgery should be the absolute last resort for treating back pain. Chiropractic care works to restore your spine to its normal function--without risky surgery or drugs--and many research studies have documented the usefulness of chiropractic for back pain.

If you live in Cary and you need care for your back pain, give our office a call today at (919) 589-0909 for a consultation or an appointment. We'll help get you back on the road to a pain-free life!

Studies

• Keeney BJ, Fulton-Kehoe D, Turner JA, Wickizer TM, Chan KC, Franklin GM. Early predictors of lumbar spine surgery after occupational back injury: results from a prospective study of workers in Washington State. Spine 2013;38(11):953-964.
• Mannion AF, Elfering A. Predictors of surgical outcome and their assessment. European Spine Journal 2006;15(Suppl 1):S93-S108.