Complex Back Surgeries On The Rise

More Medicare patients are getting a costly, complex form of back surgery. But a simpler surgery would be fine for many, a study finds. Researchers looked at people who had a painful squeezing (called stenosis) in the lower back. Three types of surgery treat it. The simpler one costs about $30,000. The more complex ones average about $80,000. Rates of the complex surgeries rose 15-fold from 2002 to 2007. The study was in the Journal of the American Medical Association on April 17.