Study: Disk Surgery Offers No Advantages

A U.S. study suggests surgery for lumbar disk herniation offers no advantages in pain reduction as compared with non-surgical treatments.

The research suggests all patients, both surgical and non-surgical, reported improved conditions.

Lumbar diskectomy — surgical removal, in part or whole, of an intervertebral disk — is the most common surgical procedure performed in the United States for patients having back and leg pain. The vast majority of such procedures are elective.

Dr. James Weinstein of Dartmouth Medical School and colleagues compared the outcomes of surgical and non-surgical treatment in the Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial, which included both a randomized trial study group and an observational study group.

Patients in both the surgery and non-operative treatment groups improved substantially over the first two years, the authors concluded. Between-group differences in improvements were … small and not statistically significant except for the secondary measures of sciatica severity and self-rated improvement.

The study appears in the Nov. 22-29 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.