Blog

Patients often ask me how they’re going to do long-term after their spine surgery. Sometimes we know and sometimes we don’t know. We just don’t have a lot of data on patients 10, 20, 30 years after surgery. The goal certainly is to give somebody back their quality of life in a tailored fashion. That’s nuanced and requires input of thought on the surgeon to do the minimum surgical intervention to get them where they need to be and, and minimize at the same time, the risk for future surgery.

I think the most important questions a patient can ask a spine surgeon or any surgeon, comes down to expectations and outcomes. If you can have a candid discussion with your surgeon about risks and benefits and what are reasonable expectations of outcomes, and you feel that he’s being honest with you and not trying to sell you on a procedure that’s generally a good indication that he’s someone or she’s someone that you can trust to do the best job possible for you.

I think a lot of times my patients come to me with a question in the mind, in their mind of how do they know they’re picking the right surgeon? And it’s a very fair and and reasonable thing to consider. I tell my patients, you have to be comfortable with your surgeon because a surgery is as much art as science.

You want to know that that surgeon’s gonna be there for you if there are any bumps in the road that you have to deal with at any time. So I think comfort level and trust are some of the most important things that you should look for in your relationship with a a particular surgeon.

When it comes to stem cells as a general rule, there’s simply not good evidence that it does anything for anybody. So if patients really want it done, I will offer that to them. But typically, I think there are other minimally invasive treatment options that have been time tested that are much more effective, that should be tried first.

Stem cell therapy kind of peaked in popularity five to 10 years ago when, before we could really see outcomes and results. It’s very rare for me to do a stem cell injection at at this time, as frankly, there’s just not good evidence to support that. It’s really helped that many people, so it’s a very expensive procedure.

It has limited risks, but if it’s not gonna work, and I tell my patients, we don’t know if it’s gonna work or think it’s gonna work, then the question is, well, why do it?