It is quite telling that there is no credible data of surgery and outcomes. Doctors lie like hell. I have written a book about obesity and weight loss. Bariatric surgeons lie more than used car salesmen. They tell outright lies. They will say and a particular procedure had a 1 in 1000 mortality rate and that the procedure that they do has a 1 in 200 rate when quite often the opposite is true.
Look at it like this. You are going to have some home improvements done so you interview a few contractors. You ask them for references. You may ask how many jobs they did in 2009 for example and you can check with the codes people who had the work done. You can check the better business bureau and you can talk to other clients. It's not that easy with a doctor. All you have to go by is their BS.
As a patient you are in a tough position. If you offend Dr Money Bag's ego he could really mess you up and he may mess you up because that means more treatment tests and a possible revision surgery.
If the contractor screws up along the way you can stop paying him and find a good one. If you have to sue him the courts will be fair. Good luck suing a bad doctor.
25 years ago the deal with back surgery was 1/2 the time it makes you worse and 25% no improvement and 25% of time you get better until the fusion cause other disks to fail. Doctors love to play blame the patient/victim.
If the surgeon will not give you a list of all his patients and if he plays the HIPPA privacy card leave. He can give you those records as long as the names are blacked out.
When it comes to ADR, in theory it makes more sense than a fusion but except for M-6 disk most are ball and socket and tend to rotate. If you have facet syndrome and you have an ADR you're screwed.
Alarm bells should go off when you get 3 opinions and they are all different. One may be right but there you are again rolling the dice based of guesses, ego and greed.
My hope is that someone somewhere will create regenerative medicine that can reverse osteo arthritis and repair disks. When that happen there will be a lot of back surgeon learning cosmetic surgery to line their pockets.
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