What she conveniently ignored is that BOTH groups in this article are “workers”, and the evidence was:

After two years, just 26 percent of those who had surgery had actually returned to work. That’s compared to 67 percent of patients who didn’t have surgery, even though they had the same exact diagnosis!

So… if her “opinion” was actually grounded in fact (rather than expressing self-deceptive bias), wouldn’t the “workers” that did not get the surgery be just as likely to be sitting at home, watching Oprah?

RESPONSE from Frank

That makes no more sense than simply giving them morphine. Surgeries appear to NOT be corrective. That’s why I love the McKenzie protocol for disc. It’s simple, elegant and virtually 100% effective for improving disc derangement.

The author states: “Two years after fusion surgery, 26% (n = 188) of fusion cases had RTW (return to work“, so that means 74% are still not to work after 2 YEARS! That’s the failure the article discusses.

RESPONSE from Frank

Everyone rolls their eyes when they hear about the $400 ashtrays in defense contracts…but what about these $1000 screws? God help us!

That IS encouraging! Hopefully it is a sign that things are starting to change, and more insurers will encourage chiropractic.

It’s the classic case of the fox minding the hen house.

I called an Insurance Company to get a new patient’s benefits, and the agent droned on that for medical benefits, the deductible was 300 and co-insurance was at 70%

Imagine that, experiencing an Insurer preferentially (and financially) steering clients towards chiropractic care!

And when you look at the recent posts we’ve made, about the superiority and cost-effectiveness of chiropractic, it’s only a matter of time before more Insurers do the same thing. It makes sense (and dollars saved!).

It makes sense that good patient education is a good place to start. Perhaps even a mailing campaign to the GP’s in your area educating them with this study and other pro chiropractic studies already mentioned. Probably a good return on investment for the patients, their MD’s and potential referrals to you.

It appears that this type of information/studies has been around for quite some time. I believe, I remember hearing that the Texas Back Institute did a study in the late 80′s and determined that less than 2% of all back surgeries (BS)were necessary. I have also heard plenty of failed surgery stats over the years, including that only 37% of the hot new laser surgeries are effective. You even have to pay cash for those- insurance does not seem to want to recognize them, last I heard. Kind of like Non-Surgical Spinal Decompression that seems have a much higher success rate with a relatively low comparison cost and little to no complications or recovery time.

Since the 80′s, even after all the compelling negative literature on BS, it seems that the number of back surgeries are up: the number of failed back surgeries are up and back surgery Profits are up.

Perhaps we can just call it Quantitative Easing III-BS with no accountability necessary?

One only need review members of the Advisory Boards for any insurance carrier to see that MDs dominate and dictate policy decisions, such as which services are covered (and it’s ALWAYS medicine, surgery) and which aren’t (sometimes it’s chiropractic).

What boggles the mind is how often people end up getting a second, third, or fourth back surgery. My question is, if you need your appendix out, how many times do you need that surgery?

If surgery ACTUALLY works (or was appropriate), then just one should do it, right??? Evidently, that’s not the case.

The simple truth is that surgical disruption of discs, or worse yet spinal fusions, cause instability of the spine, that invariably causes the decline of segments immediately above or below where the surgery occurred. As evidence-based approaches start looking at the long-term effects of spinal surgery, it will become even more obvious that surgery is a very bad choice, except for extruded nucleus pulposus (free fragments in the canal or at the nerve roots). That should be considered a “medical emergency” and should be removed immediately.

He went on record stating, “Following this kind of concept you can eliminate 99 percent of the surgical cases. In fact, the incidence of surgery if one really looks at this appropriately is one in 500.”

He also went on to say that “Backs don’t fail people, Doctors do!”.