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