Patients that underwent surgery for discogenic back pain showed greater improvement at one year than those that underwent non-surgical treatment, according to a study published in The Spine Journal.
Researchers analyzed 495 patients with discogenic back pain, 86 of whom had surgery within six months of enrollment. Surgery consisted of instrumented fusion, disc replacement, laminectomy or discectomy. Patients receiving spine surgery within six months of enrollment were designated as the "surgical treatment" group and the remainder as "non-surgical treatment."
The one-year success rate was 33 percent for the surgical group and 15 percent for non-surgical treatment group. However, the results should be interpreted cautiously because outcomes are short term and treatment was not randomly assigned, according to the study authors.
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