CCESVNC
Baltimore—USA
Surgery now,
backpain late
As approximately 3.5 million
people report significant chronic
postsurgical back pain, one begins
to wonder if there are ways to
improve upon postsurgical care
and treatment. However, this kind
of thinking may be assuming a
false relationship between cause
and effect. Jason Schwalb of the
Henry Ford Hospital postulates
that perhaps patients chosen for
spine surgery are poor candidates
from the start: it’s possible that
the surgery did not correct the
pathology, or that the surgery itself
caused complication, or that the
spinal disease is systemic. To avoid
chronic postsurgical pain, Schwalb’s
advice is that “listening to patients
describe the course of events is the
best way to determine which of
these possibilities is the culprit