Reducing Back Surgery Failure: Experiments Show Surgical Trauma Lowered By Pretreating Spinal ...

... Researchers believe that they have discovered how to prevent many cases of the most common problem encountered by patients undergoing spine surgery: failed back surgery syndrome (FBSS). In laboratory-rat experiments, neuroscientists applied the local anesthetic Lidocaine to the animals' exposed spinal cords before subjecting the rats to simulated spinal surgery. They found the procedure prevented both the release of chemicals associated with FBSS and behavior typical of animals experiencing FBSS-caused pain. ...