Over 80% of people will experience back pain sometime during their lives. The vast majority experience acute pain and will get better, without treatment or with conservative therapies, within four to six weeks. About 5 percent experience chronic pain lasting longer than three months, according to the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research.
Ordinarily, spine surgery will not be considered unless conservative non-surgical measures have failed, and even then, "open" spine surgery is not often recommended. While most published statistics claim a success rate of approximately 80% for "open" spine surgery, physician practice reports that the actual success rate for open spine surgery is closer to 50%. "Open" spine surgery utilizes a large incision and often detaches spine muscles to visualize the spine, thus causing considerable trauma to the patient.
"Over 10 years ago, if you had spine surgery in Chennai, you could expect it to take as much as one year before you would be able to return to normal activities. Minimally invasive techniques, however, are changing the face of spine surgery," the Cleveland Clinic reports.
"Minimally invasive surgery is a developing new field, which is being performed by a limited number of spine surgeons for a very limited number of procedures. Like "building a ship in a bottle," there is a steep learning curve for surgeons learning to do these procedures.
Although the recovery is often faster, the complication rate during surgery can be greater and the results not as predictable when the surgery is performed by surgeons who have not become totally skilled at these newer techniques," wrote Thomas Lowe, M.D., former Clinical Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics at the University of Colorado.
