There are many risks associated with any sort of surgery, including back surgery for pain. Doctors often either gloss over these risks, or fail to mention them completely simply because you have not asked. It is your responsibility as a patient to know and understand everything you possibly can about the surgery that you are going to have so that there are no surprises after wards.
1. Any surgery that involves a general anesthetic carries a significant risk of death. It is much more likely that you will die under the knife than while flying in a commercial airplane.
2. Our hospitals are not safe places to hang out. Hospitals in the United States are currently losing the war against some very aggressive forms of bacterial infections, including antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus, and Necrotizing fasciitis, the flesh-eating bacteria.
3. The possibility of becoming worse after your surgery is a real risk and should not be taken lightly. Many patients who undergo surgeries are finding that the problem that they assumed would go away is now actually worse. Surgery adds scar tissue, trauma, stress, and deformity to an already bad situation. Your pain may be worse, or even more disturbing; you could come out of surgery with an additional permanent injury such as constant numbness, tingling or strange sensations, or loss of flexibility or use of a limb.
4. You could become more disabled than you already are.
5. The most important thing for you to know is that back surgery may not resolve your pain. There is an epidemic of failed back surgeries in the U.S. and although doctors are doing their best to try to help us, in most cases the cause of the back pain is not addressed through surgery.
There are a few doctors are who know how pain becomes chronic and how to heal it, but they are not getting much attention because pain is a multi-billion dollar industry. John Sarno is one of a very few back doctors who is having an almost 90% cure rate. His theory is that our chronic pain is caused not by an injury or defect, but by repressed emotions, such as anger and resentment. Dr. Sarno found that some patients just needed to realize that their physical pain was not real to instantly heal themselves. For other patients it takes a few days to a few weeks.
So, before embarking on risky surgery, be sure you literally try everything including using your own mind to heal yourself.
