Neck Arthritis after surgery: How likely is it?
Hello!
The number one fear that people have about surgery is that they will become worse off after it than they are now. With so many horror stories out there, it makes sense to be cautious.
As we helped so many people avoid surgery for neck pain and pinched nerves in the neck, making us known as the only place to go for Neck pain, we wanted to see what the science says about arthritis after neck surgery.
The study I found looked at 180 people who had anterior neck fusion and were followed up 60 months (5 years) after their surgery to see what, if any, degenerative changes, and arthritis took place.
Here are the results.
“At late follow-up after anterior cervical interbody fusion, additional radiologic degeneration at the adjacent disc levels was found in 92% of the cases, often reflecting a clinical deterioration.”
In 92% of these people had degenerative changes and deterioration of their neck pain after their surgery.
“The severity of this additional degeneration correlated with the time interval since surgery.”
This means that the deterioration and breakdown of the neck worsened the more time passed after the surgery.
“The similarity of progression to degeneration between younger trauma patients and older non-trauma patients suggests that both the biomechanical impact of the interbody fusion act as triggering factors for adjacent level degeneration.”
So, no matter your age when you have this surgery, the outcome remains the same.
In another study done by neurosurgeons, they recommended the following: “the authors demonstrated that maintaining motion rather than fusion will prevent symptomatic adjacent-disc disease.”
Even Neurosurgeons are advising people that keep what they have rather than surgery.
Are you still fixed on having surgery or do you want to try something different?
Jason
