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For a complete guide on autoimmune treatments by antibiotics please read our e-book.

  Back pain can be autoimmune including disc inflammation please read the e-book for details.

 More back surgery is done in the United States then any other Country in the World. In a study of Medicare claims

the highest number of back surgeries were done in Pueblo Colorado  ( 1980-1996). Patient's had multiple back surgeries sometimes upto eight procedures in a single patient.

it was concluded that the rate of surgeries in a particular region had to do more with the number of orthopedic surgeon, rather then the pathology in the spine.

Another study done in Utah, again on the Medicare Population showed Utah laminectomy and discectomy rates were at least 20% higher than the U.S. average. In this study they reason of increased number of surgeries was the diagnosis of spinal stenosis and not the number of surgeons.

Since managed care took over the number of surgeries has been declining in that population. Maybe the patients in managed care have better backs?

In 1998 yet another study was done this time in Washington state which looked at complication rates in back surgery. Spinal fusion was associated with wider surgical exposure, more extensive dissection, and longer operative times than lumbar surgery without fusion, and previous studies have shown higher complication rates and hospital charges associated with these more complex procedures. In elderly patients, spinal fusion operations were associated with higher mortality rates than laminectomy or discectomy alone, and reoperation rates were not lower. they found higher number of complicates were associated with fusion then with a simple laminectomy.

In most people the back pain will go away within four weeks thus a person may want to wait on conservative treatments. Laminectomy which is simple removal of bone done for spinal stenosis is better then Laminectomy and Fusion. In a Fusion the upper and lower Vertebra are joined together. This is done to reduce the movement of the individual vertebrae.

Yet another study was done in Darthmouth this time comparing medical treatments to surgical treatments. They found that surgery only offered a short-term benefit. The long-term outlook for both treatments was similar.  

My own personal experience in many patients who had failed back surgeries was that if they were given trigger point treatment they improved.

So if you have back pain there is always a simple treatment.

Spinal stenosis is a medical emergency and needs to be surgically treated , or can result is severe paralysis.

 Following is another  study :

Majority of  back surgery can be avoided if you consider Myofacial pain

 

  Also see Fibromyalgia

    Click to view different size nerve fibers.

Pathalogy in CIDP and autoimmune diseases

 

Just a month after back surgery, Nancy Scatena was once again in excruciating pain. The medications her doctor prescribed barely took the edge off the unrelenting back aches and searing jolts down her left leg. “The pain just kept intensifying,” says the 52-year-old Scottsdale, Ariz., woman who suffers from spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the chanel through which spinal nerves pass. “I was suicidal.”

Finally, Scatena made an appointment with another surgeon, one whom friends had called a “miracle worker.” The new doctor assured her that this second operation would fix everything, and in the pain-free weeks following an operation to fuse two of her vertebrae it seemed that he was right. But then the pain came roaring back.

Experts estimate that nearly 600,000 Americans opt for back operations each year. But for many like Scatena, surgery is just an empty promise, say pain management experts and some surgeons.

A new study in the journal Spine shows that in many cases surgery can even backfire, leaving patients in more pain.

Researchers reviewed records from 1,450 patients in the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation database who had diagnoses of disc degeneration, disc herniation or radiculopathy, a nerve condition that causes tingling and weakness of the limbs. Half of the patients had surgery to fuse two or more vertebrae in hopes of curing low back pain. The other half had no surgery, even though they had comparable diagnoses.

After two years, just 26 percent of those who had surgery returned to work. That’s compared to 67 percent of patients who didn’t have surgery. In what might be the most troubling study finding, researchers determined that there was a 41 percent increase in the use of painkillers, specifically opiates, in those who had surgery.

The study provides clear evidence that for many patients, fusion surgeries designed to alleviate pain from degenerating discs don’t work, says the study’s lead author Dr. Trang Nguyen, a researcher at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.