Back Pain can often settle on its own without the need for surgery.

If intrusive back pain persists, or if episodes recur frequently, surgery may be considered but fortunately this is only in a small proportion of cases.

Many people manage moderate back pain, controlling their symptoms through exercise and with tablets. In the same way, occasional severe episodes of back pain are manageable although some advice on how to deal with these episodes can be helpful. At your clinic appointment, we can certainly look into the causes of these problems and offer good advice.

It is when problems start to become unacceptable that many people wonder if surgery might be helpful to cure back pain. This point is usually when back pain becomes restrictive and intrudes into day to day activities, affecting your quality of life. One or two bad episodes of back pain a year may be acceptable. Four or five bouts of back pain bad enough to keep you off work will generally not be.

Back surgery has traditionally been regarded as the ‘last resort’. That remains the case to some extent, but with modern surgical techniques the prospect of back surgery no longer needs to carry with it a sense of fear and avoidance. Improved diagnostic tests allow a better understanding of the true nature of the condition being treated, allowing the use of appropriate therapies. Those techniques are now far less invasive and often orientated towards the preservation of motion in the spine. All this means that back surgery is sometimes more readily considered in cases of troublesome and intrusive back pain.

These exercises are specific to the lower back and can be very helpful to ease pain.