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I take care of a lot of tennis players. The twisting of tennis often aggravates the low back. Sometimes you can see associated neck and shoulder problems as well. Those patients typically start with physical therapy and routine medications for treatment, progress to injections, and then ultimately if we have to do surgery, review their surgical options and try and tailor the minimum surgery for them to get them back to doing the things they want to do.

What to expect after spine surgery varies a lot by patient and surgery performed. Generally if it’s outpatient surgery or surgery where you go home the same day, you will have pain, but it should be manageable with pain pills you can take by mouth. Patients that need hospitalization for bigger surgery, obviously have a little bit of a slow recovery and can expect pain in the hospital, which will be managed, either with pain medication by mouth or IV pain medication.

Most patients rehab is part of their recovery from spine surgery and as rehab progresses, patients tend to get more and more back to normal.

The risks and benefits of spine surgery share some of the common risks of any type of surgery, which is in general all the horrible things you can think of. You’re having surgery, anything can happen. The risks are generally very focused, depending upon the procedure is, for instance, your single biggest risk from cervical surgery is having difficulty swallowing for a couple days.

In my opinion, lumbar fusions as a procedure are often overperformed. That’s why it’s important to find a surgeon who’s gonna look for all options other than a fusion to try and get you better. Ultimately, if you do need a a fusion, a surgeon that’s gonna try and do the minimum and the best way possible to get you better with the least intervention possible.

Success rates vary a lot for spine surgery based on the location, the surgery type, and the patient and the underlying condition. For instance, cervical success rates are sur surgery in the front of the neck, extraordinarily high. Some of the most successful procedures that are performed of all surgical procedures, success rates in the low back, vary more.

Generally success rates for somebody with a simple herniated disc that needs minor surgery also has very high success rates.