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.................
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/31/business/31BACK.html
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