[Surgery for chronic low back pain: good option? Better than conservative treatment?]

The goal of this article is to assess, using the literature and our own experience, whether surgery is a reasonable option in the management of non-specific or degenerative chronic low back pain. The usual starting points for low back pain are without doubt the intervertebral disc and the facet joints, but the actual etiology is often difficult to determine. Moreover, psychogenic factors may amplify clinical symptoms. In our experience, thorough clinical, psychological, and socioprofessional assessment along with relevant imaging studies, parti- cularly MRI to look for inflammatory disc disease and EOS system to evaluate sagittal balance, leads to surgical indication in only 5 % of the patients with chronic low back pain. In these cases, surgery is aimed at short-circuiting ideally one, but sometimes two, interver- tebral segment by a conventional rigid fixation (arthrodesis), or by more recent non-rigid fixation techniques (disc replacement or interspinous dynamic stabilization). Their preven- tive effect on accelerated degeneration of adjacent segment appears to be moderate at best. The problem is to compare the results of surgical and conservative treatment: The analysis of publications concerning comparative randomized studies and personal studies shows that surgery is useful in only a small proportion of well selected patients with chronic low back pain, compared with physical and cognitive-behavioral management techniques.