Back surgery for disc prolapses (slipped disc) or MSK related problems might be a poor choice. Most of the time symptoms improve on their own, even without any treatment, although some residual symptoms might remain.
On the other hand, after back surgery, symptoms could become worse too. Most patients will continue to live with some residual symptoms after surgery and never achieve full recovery. Back surgery also has risks of permanent damage to the spine or spinal cord which could cause paralysis, and erectile dysfunction in male patients.
Moreover, after back surgery, if symptoms continue, then there is little or no hope for recovery from any other treatment. For example, if someone had a discectomy, (disc removal), spinal fusion, (joining of bones in the spine) or laminectomy, (vertebra removal) due to back pain, but their symptoms continued after surgery, then physiotherapy treatment would become unsuccessful and hands-on treatment could become risky. In some cases, the damage has been done by the operation.
As professionals, we often see patients make snap decisions to undergo surgery without trying any physiotherapy treatment beforehand. It is generally an accepted practice that someone with their bladder and bowel control affected may need surgery, but from our experience we have seen that such patients can also get better with physiotherapy treatment alone.
N3 Physiotherapist has even successfully treated people with lower back pain while they were waiting for a surgery. Eventually, they didn’t need any surgery at all! We recommend seeing an expert physiotherapist before undergoing surgery.