People who have surgery for back pain often have had the pain for quite a while before the surgery is done. This means, that people experience a lot of pain and it affects their life significantly for a long period of time - long enough to feel angry, frustrated, or even depressed over how pain has changed what things can be done and how they are done.

Much progress has been made in spinal fusions since 2002 when the FDA approved the use of bone graft substitutes. Bone graft substitutes replace bone harvested from the patient or from a donor.

At first, bone morphogenetic protein referred to as rhBMP-2 was just used for single level spinal fusions. The surgery is done from the front of the body. The procedure is called an anterior lumbar interbody fusion (ALIF).

Patients should participate in physical therapy after having spinal surgery on the lower back for degeneration injuries in order to help improve the success of the surgery, recommends the North American Spine Society. Because surgery can be done a considerable amount of time after the back pain has begun, by the time the patient has had surgery, there is a good chance that the muscles in the back have begun to weaken due to limited use.

The usual two options are conservative care and kyphoplasty. An orthopedic surgeon who recently authored an article, compared the mortality between these two treatment options. Kyphoplasty is the placement of bone cement into the vertebral body using a needle that is guided by x-ray. Conservative care usually involves the use of oral analgesics, activity restriction, and bracing.

W.F. Lavele et al. Effect of kyphoplasty on survival after vertebral compression fractures. Spine.