- Joined
- Apr 20, 2005
- Messages
- 30,525
- Reaction score
- 14,763
- Political Leaning
- Conservative
I agree with this except for the first sentence.A lot of people with back pain think that if only they could get surgery they'd be cured. That's usually not the case -- surgery won't do them any good. This fellow is described as having degenerative joint disease. Surgery won't help that most of the time, but I have no doubt that there are surgeons who want to do the operation.
I suspect that most people with serious back pain have looked at the available facts and come to the same conclusion as you.
Surgery can be helpful for some degenerative conditions when the problems progress beyond back pain—e.g. limb pain or the loss of motor function from nerve impingement.
Surgery can help with things like that.
But the lower back pain remains.
There're some interesting experimental surgeries with 3D printed prosthetics etc.
But they're not covered by anybody yet. And, their long term efficacy cannot be measured yet.