Big Bucks in Older Patients With Spinal Stenosis

spinal stenosis

Spinal Stenosis surgery, according to the American Medical Association Journal, was the fastest growing lumbar surgery in recent decades.

Although implications are decompressive surgery offers an advantage over nonoperative treatment, it seems surgeons are recommending fusion procedures which are more invasive than decompression surgery and more costly.

The study indicates there were 32,152+ operations in 2007 for the primary diagnosis of lumbar Stenosis, performed on Medicare patients meeting the criteria of the study.

Adjusted hospital charges for the complex fusion procedures were $88,888 while decompression alone averaged just $23,724. The total hospital charges.........$1.65 billion dollars.

Although surgical rates declined from 2002 - 2007, the rate of complex fusion procedures increased from just over 1% to nearly 20%.

Now, I realize that I look at such figures from a perspective that does not include all the actual facts. As an example, I'm sure that the cost of Liability insurance for a spinal surgeon would look like a telephone number to me. But it is obvious that spinal surgery is "big business."

Remembering that this study was for Medicare patients over the age of 65 only, you can see where concern over motivational factors by the industry as a whole have to be considered when deciding on whether to have spinal surgery, and certainly the more invasive types.

Along with this increase in more invasive procedures, comes more complications and mortality. Those numbers have also jumped up across the board.

If you are considering having spinal surgery done, or a loved one is, you might want to take a peek at the entire abstract presented by the Journal of the American Medical Association. You can access it from this link, or from our links menu on our home page. You can also download it in PDF format from their site.

I Hope this helps you on your journey......

Rebecca