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Why Surgery is Risky

You get cut open! I am not saying all surgery is bad. There are certainly cases where it is necessary but not as often as most people think. The truth is “back pain is extremely common, and surgery often fails to relieve it”. 

(Quote: Mayo Clinic Website, July 7, 2009)

Most people expect to be pain free after a low back surgery. Sadly, low back surgery fails so often that the AMA has created a diagnosis code for the description “failed low back surgery syndrome”. Why the high failure rate? The surgeon must spread the muscles and cut some ligaments to perform the surgery. It may have been that the actual cause of pain was not corrected.

Most surgeons don’t know that the ligaments in the back can refer pain down the leg. In other words, not all sciatica is caused by a disc. Dr. R. Barbor (Sclerosant Therapy. Reunion Sobre Patologia de la Calumna Vertebral. Murcia, Spain, March 30, 1977) reported that ligament laxity and disc problems occur together in 80 percent of the cases.

Scar formation (also called fibrous repair) is the result of any intrusion into the body. Scar tissue is the result of injury to virtually any soft tissue in the body. Scar tissue is weaker, less elastic, and more pain sensitive than normal tissue. The main point to remember is that surgery involves the removal of bone, ligaments, and tendons not the repair and growth of these structures.