Back Surgery

Unjustified Surgery due to Back Pain:

Unnecessary surgery waxes and wanes. First one operation, like tonsillectomy, is in fashion, then another, like C-sections. The most recent "in" technique is "back surgery."

The Medical Racket by Martin L Gross, page 184

A forceful critic of much back surgery is Dr. Richard A. Deyo, professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He points out that most low back pain is caused by a simple muscle strain, which over time heals itself. It is not, he says, usually caused by herniated disks in the spine, which are the target of most surgeries. Dr. Deyo estimates that "diskectomy," the name of such surgery, is performed on 300,000 people a year, and is often a wasteful, unnecessary activity. A diskectomy involves cutting through the bony parts of the vertebrae to remove the jellylike substance inside. The reason is that in herniated disks, the substance protrudes, putting pressure on the nerves.

The Medical Racket by Martin L Gross, page 185

Dr. Deyo, writing in the journal Spine, says America is undergoing an unnecessary back surgery epidemic of such proportions that surgeons here perform diskectomies forty percent more often than other Western nations and five times more often than in England and Scotland. It also appears that the number of back surgeries relates directly to the number of appropriate surgeons available in the nation according to population. In the same publication, Dr. Deyo and others also studied hospitalization for back pain and found that from 1979 to 1990, nonsurgical hospitalizations decreased dramatically. Meanwhile, admissions for surgery increased.

The Medical Racket by Martin L Gross, page 185

Orthopedic doctors, who specialize in injuries related to the muscles, joints, bones, tendons, and ligaments, are often inexperienced with conservative methods of treatment and are sometimes too willing to engage in unnecessary surgery. The problem is that surgery has limited long-range benefits and is completely unnecessary for many lower back pain sufferers. When confronted with pain caused by a factor that does not show up on an X ray, an orthopedist will generally refer the patient to another professional. If you are going to an orthopedic specialist for advice on back pain, it is recommended that you see one who does not reflexively advocate surgery or prolonged reliance on prescription drugs.

Complete Encyclopedia Of Natural Healing by Gary Null PhD, page 63

In 2001, the top 50 medical and surgical procedures totaled approximately 41.8 million. These figures were taken from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project within the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Using 17.6% from the 1974 U.S. Congressional House Subcommittee Oversight Investigation as the percentage of unnecessary surgical procedures, and extrapolating from the death rate in 1974, we come up with an unnecessary procedure number of 7.5 million (7,489,718) and a death rate of 37,136, at a cost of $122 billion (using 1974 dollars). Researchers performed a very similar analysis, using the 1974 'unnecessary surgery percentage' of 17.6, on back surgery. In 1995, researchers testifying before the Department of Veterans Affairs estimated that of 250,000 back surgeries in the U.S. at a hospital cost of $11,000 per patient, the total number of unnecessary back surgeries each year in the U.S. could approach 44,000, costing as much as $484 million.

Death By Medicine by Gary Null PhD, page 19

They studied the surgical treatment for the common complaint of "low back pain," and concluded that most of the operations were unnecessary. In fact, says the agency, the less treatment for these pains, surgical or medical, the better. A report in the New England Journal of Medicine, for instance, decried the use of corticosteroids as risky and of little value. The evidence, says the federal agency, shows that regular activity rather than bed rest reduces the chances of developing a chronic condition that leads to surgery.

The Medical Racket by Martin L Gross, page 186

The findings of the MRIs are often misleading and lead to "unnecessary surgery and the results are not very good," Froymeyer said. Another expert, Robert Boyd, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said, "surgery doesn't put new backs in and it doesn't give better long-term results. It is indicated when pain doesn't respond to conservative treatment and is clearly associated with nerve root compression. Then the results of surgery are excellent." But only a small percentage of people with back pain fall into this category, according to Boyd.

The Miracle Of MSM by Stanley W Jacob, page 102

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