About 10 years ago, I had a very nice patient who had been to a bunch of great doctors for her lower back pain. At the end of it all, she was scheduled at a very prestigious university teaching hospital in New York for fusion surgery. She was coming to me as a last ditch effort to see if there was anything that could be done so that she could avoid the surgery.

In short, she had been given great care, it hadn't worked, and now she was scheduled for the next typical treatment which was a fusion surgery in her case. I explained all this to her but told her we could always try something else if she wanted, but she shouldn't get her hopes up because everything else we tried would have a low yield. Still you never knew what would work so we could try. She wanted to explore all her options so what I did was I sent her to another physical therapist who focused on her thoracic spine and thoracolumbar mobility, which wasn't the focus of the previous two places she had gone to physical therapy.

Well, long story short is that this approach turned out to be a home run and she started to see dramatic, immediate improvements to the point that surprised me, her therapist, and her. In the end, she was able to cancel her surgery and within a few months she was 100% better and she is still doing great, which I know because she comes to see me from time to time with other aches and pains, but not her back.