Want To Avoid Surgery? See A Chiropractor

In our Prescott office, we see a lot of patients who are struggling with back pain, and some of these patients have been told they might need surgery to recover. Thankfully, Weary Chiropractic Clinic has helped many people get pain relief without the need for any type of surgical treatment. The scientific literature agrees with the results we see in our office. One study published in the medical journal Spine found that seeing a chiropractor as your first move in overcoming with your back problems may actually keep you off of the operating table.

In this scientific study, medical professionals from Dartmouth reviewed statistics from about 1,900 workers from Washington state who first saw either a surgeon or a chiropractic doctor for their back-related issues. They then looked at three years' worth of follow-up medical records to ascertain whether the subjects ended up having back surgery in an attempt to treat the problem.

What the authors discovered was that 42.7% of the individuals who first consulted with a surgeon for their back issues ended up having a surgical procedure in that 3-year time span, whereas only 1.5 percent of those who first consulted with a chiropractor had the same fate. The authors wrote:

"Even after controlling for injury severity and other measures, workers with an initial visit for the injury to a surgeon had almost nine times the odds of receiving lumbar spine surgery compared to those seeing primary care providers, whereas workers whose first visit was to a chiropractor had significantly lower odds of surgery."

These are remarkable findings. Visiting a chiropractor considerably reduces your odds of having back surgery, plus the chiropractic patients in this scientific study "had lower odds of chronic work disability" and they also had fewer expensive MRI tests.

Let's also take into account this important point: this study was carried out by orthopedic surgeons from Dartmouth College, and printed in the world's most influential medical publication on spinal injury.

Surgery: The Last Resort

Any surgical procedure has risks, but a serious downside linked to spine surgery is that there's a very high rate of failure. In an important analysis in the European Spine Journal, researchers wrote:

"Failed back surgery is a problem that has become sufficiently widespread to even warrant its own special conferences, with recent reviews reporting failure rates ranging from 5 to 50%."

The experts in this same study concluded:

"It is extremely difficult to identify unequivocal predictor factors that can be used to accurately predict the outcome of surgery."

As a chiropractor, Weary Chiropractic Clinic believes that surgery should be the absolute last choice for treating back pain. Chiropractic works to restore your spine to its normal function--without high-risk surgery or drugs--and many scientific studies have documented the efficacy of chiropractic for back pain.

If you live in Prescott and you need relief for your back pain, give our practice a call today at (928) 778-2227 for a consultation or an appointment. We'll help get you back on the road to a pain-free life!

Studies

• Keeney BJ, Fulton-Kehoe D, Turner JA, Wickizer TM, Chan KC, Franklin GM. Early predictors of lumbar spine surgery after occupational back injury: results from a prospective study of workers in Washington State. Spine 2013;38(11):953-964.
• Mannion AF, Elfering A. Predictors of surgical outcome and their assessment. European Spine Journal 2006;15(Suppl 1):S93-S108.