Avoiding the Surgeon's Knife with Chiropractic Treatment

In our Hazleton and Conyngham chiropractic clinic, we see many people who are struggling with back pain, and some of these people have been informed they might need surgery to recover. Thankfully, Eyerly Chiropractic Offices has helped many people get pain relief without the need for any type of surgical treatment. The scientific literature confirms the results we see in our practice. One study published in the medical journal Spine found that seeing a chiropractor as your first move in dealing with your back pain may literally keep you out of the operating room.

In this report, medical experts from Dartmouth reviewed statistics from about 1,900 workers from the state of Washington who first saw either a surgeon or a chiropractor for their back pain issues. They then examined three years' worth of follow-up medical information to ascertain whether the subjects ended up having back surgery in an effort to treat the issue.

What the authors found was that about 43% of the patients who first consulted with a surgeon for their back problems ended up in surgery in that 3-year time frame, 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 impressive results. Seeing a chiropractor drastically reduces your odds of getting back surgery, plus the chiropractic patients in this study "had lower odds of chronic work disability" and they also had fewer expensive MRI tests.

Let's also take note this important detail: this study was carried out by orthopedic surgeons from Dartmouth College, and published in the world's most distinguished medical publication on spinal injury.

Why You Should Avoid Surgery

Any surgical procedure has risks, but a major problem linked to spinal surgery is that there is a very high rate of failure. In an important review 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, Eyerly Chiropractic Offices is convinced that surgery should be the absolute last resort for treating back pain. Chiropractic care works to restore your spine to its normal function--without high-risk surgery or drugs--and many scientific studies have documented the effectiveness of chiropractic for back pain.

If you live in Hazleton and Conyngham and you need care for your back pain, give our practice a call today at (570) 455-5822 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.