Deciding whether to have back surgery can be a major decision.  Everyone’s heard the war stories about surgeries gone wrong or surgeries that don’t result in less back pain.  But the fact is that surgery is probably one of the best choices for permanent pain reduction when it’s clear what is causing the pain.  You don’t ever have to feel forced to choose surgery unless there’s a chance of paralysis if you don’t have it.  In that case, I can’t imagine choosing to avoid surgery.

The good news is that by the time you decide to have surgery, you’ve probably been through a complete battery of tests and have tried numerous other approaches to relieving your back pain.  That means surgery has become the last alternative and appears to be the one that will work in your situation.  I highly advise you to get a second opinion though no matter how good you think your doctor may be.  The reason is because the cause of back pain can be so elusive.  You certainly want to avoid surgery if it seems more like a guesswork solution.

Back pain can be a weird ailment.  You can have a bad back and the pain is in the legs.  By a bad back I mean there’s a problem with the spine that’s been identified as the cause of your problems.  But back pain can actually be more like butt pain, leg pain or even foot pain. That’s because the sciatica nerve runs from the spine to the toes.  Anywhere the nerve gets pinched, it’s going to send shooting pain down the length of the nerve.  It’s like an electrical cord that’s been plugged into the wall.

Many times surgery seems to be the best option when pain is running down both of your legs.  That indicates a problem in the lower back that starts in the spine which can be a bulging disc for example.  The important thing to remember is that you have to give the spine time to heal using other treatments before you can decide if the last resort surgery is justified.  It would be terrible to go through surgery on the spine only to find out you didn’t need it.