THURSDAY, June 16, 2005 (HealthDay News) -- Surgeons tend to be overly optimistic when predicting back surgery outcomes, according to a new Swiss study.
In a study of 197 patients who had surgery for low back pain or sciatica, surgeons forecast at least moderate improvement for nearly all patients. But about 40 percent of patients displayed little or no improvement a year after their respective surgeries, the researchers report in the June 15 issue of Spine.
Before each surgery, researchers at the University of Lausanne asked surgeons to predict how much the procedure would improve that patient's quality of life. Overall, surgeons predicted that 79 percent of the patients would experience "a great deal of improvement" while another 20 percent would achieve "moderate improvement."
That wasn't always the case: 56 percent of the patients predicted to have "a great deal of improvement" still showed no significant improvements in their general health a year after their back surgery, the Swiss team reports.
In fact, of the 99 percent of patients predicted to gain either a "moderate" or "a great deal" of improvement in terms of their quality of life, 39 percent failed to show even "minimally clinically important" improvement, the researchers concluded.
More information
The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons has information about low back surgery.
