Back Surgery Placebo

Spinal surgery, like any other type of treatment, can enact a placebo effect, providing partial or temporary relief for a variety of back pain diagnoses, even though the procedure does absolutely nothing to resolve the true source of pain. Surgical placebo has been studied for many health conditions and continues to fascinate doctors and psychologists who understand and appreciate the depths of the human mind, as well as how the mind and body interact constantly to create overall health.

What is a Back Surgery Placebo?

This has recently been validated by diagnostic criteria changes which caution physicians not to implicate structural spinal issues located on imaging studies as the sources of pain without definitive proof.

Furthermore, the same medical organizations which issued the above warning state that in the vast majority of cases and conditions, no links exist between common spinal irregularities, such as herniated discs, and the incidence of pain.

Therefore, even if the surgery is successful based on structural goals, the pain will not go away, as it does not come from the mistakenly diagnosed source. However, some patients DO enjoy partial or temporary relief, even though the actual source of pain remains.

In some of these cases, the actual underlying symptomatic causation may be ischemia driven by a psychosomatic back pain process. In others, there may be a disease process at work or a yet undiscovered structural condition elsewhere in the spine.

Regardless, it is unfortunate that the placebo created is almost certain to be short lived. To put it simply, a surgical placebo makes the person think the pain is gone by eliminating the suspected causative issue, but the real issue enacting the symptom remains and will usually flare up again, creating what is known as failed back surgery.

Back Surgery Placebo Facts

It is no surprise to me that I continually receive countless letters each week from postoperative patients who feel worse after surgery. This is to be expected, considering the epidemic incidence of misdiagnosis. However, I also get many letters stating how a surgical procedure partially or completely ameliorated symptoms for several weeks, months or years.

In some patients, the pain may have been a caused by a misdiagnosed structural source. For them, the surgical event was so powerful, that some benefit was still imparted physically, even though no actual positive change was made to the anatomy. In others, the source of pain is a mindbody condition. For these patients, the pain eventually returned in identical form or in a new expression, commonly far worse than before. This is easily explained by the idea of surgical placebo. The psycho-emotional imperative actually causing the pain could only be fooled by the placebo effect for so long, necessitating a recurrence of pain and bringing the patient back to square one in their quest for relief.

Back Surgery Placebo Advice

Remember that the mind and body are interconnected in all they do. Although this basic human fact was still denied by some doctors only a few short years ago, now there is virtually universal acceptance for the tenets of mindbody medicine. You will see it in cancer care, addiction rehabilitation and chronic pain clinics the world over. You might also see the evidence of the placebo effect in dorsopathy patients undergoing operations for seemingly very structural pain syndromes.

This is the back surgery placebo effect and hopefully, with time, more patients will learn about it to save themselves from the often unnecessary trauma of spinal operations.