Avoid Back Surgery With Chiropractic Treatment

In our Parkland office, we see a large number of patients who are troubled with back pain, and some of these people have been advised they might need surgery to recover. Fortunately, Dr. Scharf has helped many people get pain relief without the need for any type of surgical treatment. The science agrees with the success we see in our office. One study published in the academic journal Spine found that seeing a chiropractor as your first step in overcoming with your back problems may actually keep you out of the operating room.

In this report, medical experts from Dartmouth reviewed data from about 1,900 workers from the state of Washington 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 information to find out whether the subjects ended up having back surgery in an effort to correct the problem.

What the authors observed was that 42.7% of the patients who first saw a surgeon for their back issues ended up having a surgical procedure in that 3-year time frame, whereas only 1.5% of those who first consulted with 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 remarkable findings. Consulting with a chiropractor drastically decreases 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 account this important detail: this study was carried out by orthopedic surgeons from Dartmouth College, and printed in the world's most distinguished medical publication on spinal injuries.

Surgery: The Last Resort

Any surgery has risks, but a major downside associated with 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 experts in 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. Scharf believes that surgery should be the absolute last resort for treating back pain. Chiropractic works to restore your spine to its normal function--without risky surgery or drugs--and many scientific studies have documented the usefulness of chiropractic for back pain.

If you live in Parkland and you need care for your back pain, give our practice a call today at (954) 227-0088 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.