For Disk Ruptures, Hold the Knife

Geezer’s regular squash partner has had so many surgeries to repair ruptured disks that he could probably do the operation himself. Now comes a study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, that suggests he may have been just as well off with no surgery at all. The New York Times reports on the study, which looked at outcomes of nearly 2,000 people with disk problems and compared the condition, two years down the road, of those who had surgery and those who didn’t. The Times reports that about 70 percent of the patients in the two groups
said they had a “major improvement” in their symptoms. No one who
waited had serious consequences, and no one who had surgery had a
disastrous result. Read more in the Times.