Pain Even After Surgery

While most patients prefer to avoid surgery where possible, surgery is an appropriate and preferred solution in some specific situations.
In rare cases, patients may continue to suffer from symptoms of pain and stiffness after surgery.

This can be a source of significant frustration especially when the patients had expected surgery to be the dramatic solution to their difficult problems.

It can also be confusing when patients are told “the scans are okay” or “the surgery was successful” when they do not feel better.

This can be a complex condition and there are many possible reasons.

In some instances, the body has not had enough time to fully recover and symptoms will improve with rest.

At times, there could be some technical aspects of surgery that should best be discussed with the surgeon.

There are also cases where a patient’s original symptoms are caused by multiple factors such as inflammation, joint dysfunction, degeneration, and muscular trigger points.
Surgery may correct one specific cause of the patient’s symptoms but not be able to address the other causes.
In such instances, appropriate post-surgery physiotherapy rehabilitation is likely needed.

There are also cases where after surgery, due to a period of inactivity and delayed healing, fibrotic scar tissue develops which causes discomfort.

One situation of pain after surgery is commonly known as “failed back surgery syndrome (FBSS) ”
It describes a situation where patients do not have a good result after spine surgery.

There are many reasons why back surgery may not work.
A well-recognized reason is that while surgery may achieve specific goals such as decompressing a pinched nerve or stabilizing a painful joint, it is less likely to relieve all symptoms if there are also causes of pain such as multi-level disc degeneration, piriformis syndrome and sacroiliac joint dysfunction.

At The Pain Relief Clinic, we are able to help patients with aches, pain and stiffness even after having undergone surgery by first understanding the precise (and often multiple) reasons for the problem, before offering a comprehensive range of possible solutions.