Avoiding the Surgeon's Knife with Chiropractic

In our Anderson Township office, we see a lot of people who are dealing with back pain, and a few of these folks have been told they might need surgery to recover. Thankfully, Dr. Nuesse has helped many people get relief without the need for any type of surgery. The scientific literature confirms the success we see in our practice. One medical 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 scientific study, medical researchers from Dartmouth reviewed data from about 1,900 workers from Washington state who first saw either an orthopedic surgeon or a chiropractic doctor for their back pain issues. They then examined three years' worth of follow-up medical records to find out whether the individuals ended up having back surgery in an effort to correct the problem.

What the authors discovered was that 42.7% of the individuals who first consulted with a surgeon for their back problems ended up with surgery in that 3-year time span, 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 outcomes. Consulting with a chiropractor drastically reduces your odds of having back surgery, plus the chiropractic patients in this report "had lower odds of chronic work disability" and they also had fewer expensive MRI tests.

Let's also take into consideration this important detail: this study was carried out by orthopedic surgeons from Dartmouth College, and published in the world's most influential medical publication on spinal injury.

The Problems with Surgery

Any surgery has risks, but a serious downside linked to spine 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, Dr. Nuesse believes that surgery should be the absolute last choice for treating back pain. Chiropractic works to restore your spine to its normal function--without high-risk surgery or drugs--and many scientific studies have confirmed the effectiveness of chiropractic for back pain.

If you live in Anderson Township and you need relief for your back pain, give our practice a call today at (513) 271-2500 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.