Neck Fusion: Will it help you get off pills?
Hello there
One of the many reasons why people get neck surgery is to have less neck pain so that they do not have to keep taking painkillers every day for it.
Today I want to tell you about a study I found that looked at how likely you were to be completely off opioid pain killers up to a year after neck fusion.
This study looked at almost 21000 people that went for neck fusion surgery. They found that 50% of the patients were using opioid pain killers before the operation.
After the operation, they found that 75% of the people that underwent neck fusion were still on these pain killers 3 months after the surgery.
30% remained on the one year after the operation.
Taking opioid pain killers for a long time after surgery was the biggest factor that predicted the likelihood of complications like emergency/ casualty visits, wound complications such as infections, neurological complications, acute renal failure and blood clots.
Chronic opioid therapy was strongly associated with reoperations.
This tells me that taking painkillers for a long time is not good for your health.
Worse still, the operation causes permanent harm to your neck that cannot be undone after the surgery.
This study also shows that taking pain killers before the operation was the most likely to cause the person needing pain killers for a long time after the surgery as well as complications.
Do you still think painkillers or an operation is the right thing for you?
Jason
