Back pains
have been a bane to people for a long time. Pains in the lower back or
spine cause lot of pain and misery and back surgery is one of the solutions.
Sufferers from back pain should contact their doctors and know about the
alternate solutions and options available before planning or going for
a back surgery.
Back surgeries are being performed in thousands, and there are cases of
failed back surgery. Failed back surgery is a unique term used in back
surgery (other surgeries normally do not have a term or condition to term
failed ear surgery etc), and is used to name a case where back surgery
has been performed on a person, but the problem has not been solved completely.
Back surgery is a unique surgery in the sense that it cannot literally
remove the pain. The surgery is normally done to change the anatomy of
the spine or anything else that is a probably cause of the pain. There
are multiple reasons why the surgery might not completely succeed in curing
the back pain.
Since the surgery is mostly used either to decompress a nerve root that
can be the cause of the pain due to being pinched or to stabilize a joint
that is painful or to remove damaged disc that is the source of the problem,
the solution is as good as the diagnosis, i.e. the cure or the removal
is specific to the problem that is identified .
The common reason for failed back surgery is that the problem or the cause
of the back pain was not identified before surgery. If for some reason,
the surgeon failed to identify the exact reason or place of origin of
the problem, the back surgery is most likely to fail. Patients with failed
back surgery are those for whom the pain or the problem has not subsidized
even after a couple of months after the surgery.
In these cases, the patients must go back to the doctor in order to see
whether the original diagnosis is wrong, or whether the pain is something
new that might normally occur after a surgery. For e.g. after a spinal
fusion surgery it is common for patients to experience pain from the place
where the bone graft was made to remove bone discs that are placed in
the place of the damaged or degenerated spine discs. This is not a case
of failed back surgery.
Failed back
surgery is not an uncommon condition and patients have to be very careful
in observing and contacting their doctors in such conditions.
