Back surgery isn’t always necessary to relieve back pain. Adogwa and colleagues reported that less than 1% of 497,822 lumbar spinal stenosis or spondylolisthesis patients required back surgery. (1) What do the other 99% need? Pain relief. An understanding of their condition. Gentle treatment. A solid treatment plan. New Hampshire Spine and Sport has such a plan for Southern New Hampshire post-back-surgery, failed back surgery syndrome, continued back pain (choose your term!) patients that incorporates safe, doctor-directed, patient-engaged chiropractic care via The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management.
BACK PAIN RELIEF AFTER BACK SURGERY
Certain researchers in the medical profession want to discard their descriptive phrase “failed back surgical syndrome” for “persistent spinal pain syndrome type 2.” For such patients with pain after back surgery with a laminectomy, discectomy, or fusion who sought chiropractic spinal manipulation for relief, numeric pain rating scale (0-10/worst-pain scale) scores dropped from 6.6 to 0.6 and Oswestry Disability Index (0 to 100/worst-pain scale) scores fell from 43.8 to 2.4. At 12 months’ post chiropractic care (multi-modal chiropractic care with flexion-distraction amid the treatments), 48% retained their improvement, 42% experienced a recurrence, 10% were unavailable for follow up. (2) A retrospective review of 32 cases of post-lumbar spine surgery pain patients noted numeric pain score changes from 6.4 to 2.3 (on a 10 point scale) for a 4.1 decrease in pain. No adverse events were documented for any of the postsurgical patients in this review with the mean number of treatments being 14. Chiropractic care integrated the delivery of Cox® flexion distraction. (3) A prospective study of 69 post-surgical continued pain patients who reported back pain following back surgery were treated by 15 chiropractors. All delivered care via protocols of the Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management. 50% or greater relief of pain at the end of active care was documented for 81% of the patients. The mean number of days of care was 49 days;treatments was 11. At 2 years follow up, 56 patients were available. 78.6% of them had kept their pain relief greater than 50%. Mean pain relief at end of care was 71.6 and 70 at 2-years follow-up. 43% had not pursued more care in 2 years. 32 patients had: 17 of them went through chiropractic manipulation, 8 had PT, exercise, injections, and medication; 5 went through further surgery. (Bottomline: Greater than 50% relief of back pain following back surgery was attained for 81% of patients in 11 visits over 49 days.) (4) Southern New Hampshire back pain sufferers who have already undergone back surgery may welcome these outcomes for themselves! New Hampshire Spine and Sport is prepared to help.
KNOWLEDGE OF BIOMECHANICAL CHANGES
To commit to a plan, all involved must understand what is going to happen to bring about pain relief. A study calculated the short-term effect of flexion distraction spinal manipulation on various spinal aspects of patients who have lumbar degenerative disc disease (DDD). Intervertebral disc height was enlarged from 6.32 to 6.93. Back pain decreased from 69.17 to 48.48. Lumbar spine mobility recovered as it changed from 17.37 to 12.69 (bent over with fingers stretching toward the floor). Passive straight leg raise increased from 46.94 to 56.01. (5) These are desired and documented changes with gentle, safe Southern New Hampshire chiropractic care.
CONTACT New Hampshire Spine and Sport
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. David Atiyeh on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes the relief with The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management for a patient who’d already had back surgery and still had back pain.
Schedule your Southern New Hampshire chiropractic appointment now. Back surgery isn’t the only option for many with back pain. And for those who have already had back surgery, the non-surgical approach with chiropractic may ultimately produce the pain relief you want.