Interesting article, needs registration. $$$$ drives health care, naturally, not science. Our tax
dollars are paying for this through Medicare.....................
"An Operation to Ease Back Pain Bolsters the Bottom Line, Too
By REED ABELSON and MELODY PETERSEN
Published: December 31, 2003
A complex operation called spinal fusion has emerged as the treatment of choice for many kinds of
unrelenting back pain. A quarter million of the procedures, in which metal rods are screwed into the
spine to stabilize it, were performed this year in the United States, three times as many as a
decade ago.
But a number of researchers say there is little scientific evidence to show that for most
patients, spinal fusion works any better than a simpler operation, the laminectomy. And
laminectomies get patients out of the hospital and back to their daily routine much faster.
Some people, experts add, would be better off with no surgery at all."
big snip of interesting stuff.................
BL
"As the waves pass the rock, their shape is changed. There is a hologram of the rock within the wave
that comes forward and crashes on the beach, then there's a reflected wave back." Ralph Abraham
"I'd like to learn to windsurf." BL