Avoiding the Surgeon's Knife with Chiropractic

In our Boardman office, we see a lot of patients who are troubled with back pain, and a few of these people have been told they might need surgery to recover. Fortunately, Dr. Carradine has helped many people get pain relief without the need for any type of surgical treatment. The scientific literature confirms the results we see in our office. One medical study published in the journal Spine found that seeing a chiropractor as your first step in dealing with your back issues may actually keep you out of the operating room.

In this research study, medical professionals from Dartmouth reviewed statistics from 1,885 workers from Washington state who first saw either an orthopedic surgeon or a chiropractic doctor for their low back issues. They then looked at three years' worth of follow-up medical information to find out whether the patients ended up having back surgery in an attempt to correct the issue.

What the authors discovered was that about 43% of the patients who first consulted with a surgeon for their back problems ended up in surgery in that 3-year time span, whereas only 1.5 percent 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 findings. Consulting with a chiropractor significantly decreases your odds of having back surgery, plus the chiropractic patients in this scientific study "had lower odds of chronic work disability" and they also had fewer expensive MRI tests.

Let's also take note this important detail: this study was carried out by orthopedic surgeons from Dartmouth College, and printed in the world's most influential medical publication on spinal injuries.

Surgery: The Last Resort

Any surgery has risks, but a serious problem linked to spine surgery is that there's a very high failure rate. In an important analysis 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, Dr. Carradine is convinced that surgery should be the absolute last choice for treating back pain. Chiropractic care works to restore your spine to its normal function--without high-risk surgery or drugs--and many research studies have established the efficacy of chiropractic for back pain.

If you live in Boardman and you need care for your back pain, give our office a call today at (330) 758-4446 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.