04/27/2025
In a given year, 1.2 million Americans undergo spinal surgery, with procedures for lower back pain costing $90 billion a year; roughly 200,000 are cervical procedures. In addition, back surgeries that don’t fix the initial condition are so common they’re now a condition of their own: Failed-back-surgery syndrome, or FBSS, is estimated to affect as many as 40 percent of those who undergo spinal procedures. Finally, back surgeries are among the most overprescribed operations, with one study finding that over three years, Medicare beneficiaries underwent more than 200,000 unnecessary back-related procedures.
