Unnecessary Surgeries + The Watch Analogy The Green Book Series Today I want to apply some common sense, straight line thinking to a problem that is plaguing all “health care systems” worldwide, especially here in the United States. That problem is unnecessary surgeries. This has been an issue for over a century! Dr. BJ Palmer, the world’s most pioneering chiropractor wrote about this for years. Sadly, his warnings about this topic have fallen on deaf ears as the prevalence, cost and damage to patients done by unnecessary surgeries has skyrocketed! Nevertheless, his words of wisdom are as prescient today as they were back then which is why I would like to share them with you today! But first, let’s add some context to this discussion. This is an excerpt from the International journal of clinical practice in 2014: “US health care expenditures per capita far exceeds that of ANY other nation in the WORLD. Indeed, over the last 15 years, the USA has distantly surpassed most countries in the developed world in total healthcare expenditures per capita with the USA now spending over 17.4% of its gross domestic product on health care ($7960 per capita) compared with only 8.5% of GDP in Japan ($2878 per capita) a distant second. Such spending growth rates are unsustainable, and the system would soon go broke if not corrected. The drivers of these spending growth rates in US healthcare are several and varied. In September of 2012, the Institute of Medicine reported that US healthcare squandered over $750 billion in 2009 through UNNEEDED care.” Now, with all that spending, surely we have the best outcomes right?..... WRONG, dead wrong in fact. A 2022 report by The Common Wealth Fund revealed we rank 38th in the world in life expectancy, which is LAST for all major developed nations, there are 3rd world countries with higher life expectancies! If that was not bad enough, did you know of all countries in 2020, The United States possessed the HIGHEST infant mortality rate which is markedly higher than Norway which was the top country in the world for having the lowest infant mortality rate. This was reported in The American Journal of Managed Care in January of THIS year, 2023. This is from the Journal Patient Safety In Surgery in 2017 Title, “Why do surgeons continue to perform unnecessary surgery?” Please listen very closely, what you are about to learn will likely be quite shocking.. “This unrecognized problem has escalated so far that medical errors currently rank as THE 3RD leading cause of death in the United States. Strikingly, in the 21st century, we still have to come to terms with the absurd reality that it is significantly safer to board a commercial airplane, a spacecraft, or a nuclear submarine, than to be admitted to a US hospital!” Let me repeat, medical errors account for the 3RD leading cause of death in the US, over 440,000 people die in the US per year! Shouldn’t that be a headline on the news?? Keep in mind that data is from 2013, all indications suggest the current number of deaths caused by medical errors are EVEN higher! Many of those deaths are due directly or are related to complications from unnecessary surgeries. What is unnecessary surgery? They define it as follows: “Any surgical intervention that is either not needed, not indicated, or not in the patient’s best interest when weighted against other available options, including conservative measures.” That last part is extremely important, they included conservative measures being something that should be done if it can benefit the patient over surgery. Chiropractic is such a measure, which in many cases should be used first BEFORE resorting to surgery. Notice I said in many cases. Of course, there ARE TRUE surgical emergencies and a number of conditions where surgery IS what SHOULD be done. In these instances, surgery can be absolutely lifesaving and or life changing. Thank god we have skilled surgeons & modern techniques for THOSE instances! However, those true surgical cases are NOT our focus today. Today’s focus is on unnecessary surgeries. If you are wondering: Just how many surgeries are performed in the US, each year, the numbers are staggering: In the US there are 40-50 MILLION surgeries performed each year! According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, nearly 16% of all surgeries may be unnecessary: that would mean in the US there are between 6.4 and 8 MILLION unnecessary surgeries performed each year! In 2020 In the US alone over 700,00 arthroscopic partial knee meniscectomies are performed every year. Recently, a randomized, double-blind, sham controlled trial (highest level of evidence), revealed NO benefit for patients from the surgery at the 12 month follow up vs. those that did not have surgery. This study, The Finnish Degenerative Meniscal Lesion Study” certainly ruffled some feathers amongst the surgical ...
