[simeoni]

Well put! All surgeons have some kind of financial ties. It just seems to me unjustified to single out one or two surgeons while it is vastly common.

The question is do the financial ties affect the outcome positively or negatively. There are not many discs a single surgeon can master. And if you want to do a good responsible job, you cannot change your preferred disc too often.

I think experience and surgical skills, not to mention critical view on what kind of surgery is needed if any, are the most important factors. There are "knife happy" surgeons and ones that deny surgery until it is too late. I`ve seen both types.

This went a little off topic. But I must say that being European, my conception is that the use of ADR (especially cervical) among Europeans has been exaggerated on many sites that market ADR for Americans. It is still a marginal procedure in most European countries. Eg. there is nobody in Finland that does cervical ADR besides a single study group. Lumbar is more common, but also rare.