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Spinal-Fusion Surgery — The Case for Restraint
Abstract
The use of spinal-fusion surgery is increasing rapidly in the United States. Most of these expensive, complex procedures are now being done for back pain and degenerative disease. Spinal fusions require long operations and are associated with an increase in the rate of complications, particularly in older patients. The benefits of surgery may be only modest, and pain relief is affected by many factors besides the anatomy. The authors of this article argue for restraint in the use of spinal-fusion surgery and for controlled trials to define more clearly the associated benefits and the indications.
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Citations
Cited by
The Rising Prevalence of Chronic Low Back Pain
Freburger, J. K., Holmes, G. M., Agans, R. P., Jackman, A. M., Darter, J. D., Wallace, A. S., Castel, L. D., Kalsbeek, W. D., & Carey, T. S. (2009) · Archives of Internal Medicine · doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2008.543 · Cited by 1,507
Reducing implant-related infections: active release strategies
Hetrick, E. M., & Schoenfisch, M. H. (2006) · Chemical Society Reviews · doi:10.1039/b515219b · Cited by 1,201
Martin, B. I., Mirza, S. K., Spina, N., Spiker, W. R., Lawrence, B., & Brodke, D. S. (2019) · Spine · doi:10.1097/brs.0000000000002822 · Cited by 917
Self-citationOvertreating chronic back pain: time to back off?
Deyo, R. A., Mirza, S. K., Turner, J. A., & Martin, B. I. (2009) · The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine · doi:10.3122/jabfm.2009.01.080102 · Cited by 796
Self-citationGatchel, R. J., & Okifuji, A. (2006) · The Journal of Pain · doi:10.1016/j.jpain.2006.08.005 · Cited by 535
Metadata
- Authors
- Deyo, R. A., Nachemson, A., & Mirza, S. K.
- Venue
- New England Journal of Medicine
- Publisher
- Massachusetts Medical Society
- Published
- 2004-02-12
- Volume
- 350
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 722-726
- ISSN
- 0028-4793 (ISSN-L)
- 1533-4406
- OpenAlex
- W1984899992
- Cited by
- 515
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 20.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Deyo, R. A., Nachemson, A., & Mirza, S. K. (2004). Spinal-Fusion Surgery — The Case for Restraint. New England Journal of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmsb031771
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
