Avoid Back Surgery With Chiropractic Treatment

In our Buffalo practice, we see a lot of patients who are dealing with back pain, and some of these people have been told they might need surgery to recover. Thankfully, Buffalo Family Chiropractic Wellness, P. C. has helped many people get pain relief without the need for any type of surgical procedure. The scientific research agrees with the results we see in our practice. One medical study published in the medical journal Spine found that consulting with a chiropractor as your first step in overcoming with your back pain may actually keep you out of the operating room.

In this study, medical professionals from Dartmouth reviewed data from about 1,900 workers from Washington state who first saw either a surgeon or a chiropractor for their back pain issues. They then used three years' worth of follow-up medical data to find out whether the patients ended up having back surgery in an attempt to correct the issue.

What the researchers determined was that about 43% of the patients who first consulted with a surgeon for their back problems ended up with surgery 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 impressive outcomes. Consulting with a chiropractor drastically reduces your odds of getting back surgery, plus the chiropractic patients in this study "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 published in the world's most prestigious medical journal on spinal injury.

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 review 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, Buffalo Family Chiropractic Wellness, P. C. 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 Buffalo and you need relief for your back pain, give our office a call today at (716) 854-1563 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.