backs surgery

back surgery

Most of us are familiar with back pain of some kind. You bend over to pick something up or twist the wrong way, and the pain hits you like a baseball bat. Even though it hurts a lot, however, you usually get better in a few days by resting, using a heating pad or ice packs and taking anti-inflammatory medications.

Sometimes your back pain doesn’t go away, though. It may have been getting worse for a long time, and you’re tired of suffering with it. You’ve probably tried a lot of things besides home treatment, like prescription medications, steroid injections and physical therapy, and you’re still not getting relief.

Physicians are reluctant to suggest back surgery unless it’s really necessary and nothing else helps. Any kind of surgery has risks associated with it; some risks associated with back surgery are:

· General surgical risks, such as reaction to anesthesia, bleeding, infection, lung problems and blood clots.

· Problems with the surgery itself, like poor healing of bone grafts.

· Problems due to spinal nerve damage, like weakness and paralysis, urinary or fecal incontinence and sexual dysfunction.

· Poor surgical results. Back surgery doesn’t always relieve the pain, and some people even get “failed back surgery syndrome” with persistent pain.