I started my practice in Seattle in 1986. I was feeling pretty beat up from my spine training. I felt well-trained and began to perform fusions for LBP with a zeal. It was what I was trained to do. It quickly became clear that chronic low back pain was much … Read More
I quit my surgical spine practice in 2019 because I was seeing so much surgery performed on normally aging spines. They were causing severe damage to people’s spines and destroying their lives. Frequently, the impact was catastrophic. At the same time, I was witnessing hundreds of patients having their pain … Read More
Deciding whether to undergo spine surgery is one of the most important choices you will ever make. Currently, failed spine surgery is so common there is even a separate diagnosis for it – “Failed Back Surgery Syndrome.” You do not want to become one of these people, as it usually … Read More
A seventy-three-year-old woman—let’s call her Dorothy for the sake of this story—was understandably apprehensive. She had just been told that she needed an eight-level spine fusion from her tenth thoracic vertebra to her pelvis, so she came to me for a second opinion. Dorothy was a retired National Guard armed … Read More
What percentage of success would you want from your potential surgery on your lower back before you decided to proceed with a major surgical intervention such as a back fusion or artificial disc? Most of my patients feel that they would like a greater than 75% chance of significantly decreasing … Read More