Clinical Evaluation of Failed Back Surgery Syndrome(FBSS)

ABSTRACT

The authors experienced 186 cases of Failed Back Surgery Syndrome(FBSS), which were 2.5% of all admitted patients in authors' clinic from 1983 to 1992. Among them, 173 patients were referred cases from other hospital and 13 patients were authors' cases which was 0.2% of authors' back surgery. About 75% of all was come to our clinic within 2 years after initial operation. The common cause of FBSS was resulted form inadequate surgery or surgical complications (51%). In these cases, incomplete decompression at initial operation was seemed to be a major factor. The next causes was due to inadequate patient selection(26.3%) and the FBSS was more prevalent when the patient had only back pain without leg pain. The other causes of FBSS was post-operative adhesion(8.6%), discitis(4.3%), and inadequate diagnosis(4.3%). So about 80% of FBSS seem to have preventable causes. 66 of 186 cases was performed reoperation and 70% of them had improvement.