FAILED BACK SURGERY – A CLINICAL REVIEW

Abstract

Failed back surgery syndrome (also called FBSS, or failed back syndrome) is a chronic disorder that has some impact on the patient and health care system. The factors may occur in the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative periods. FBSS is often misused, as it is not actually a syndrome - it is a very generalized term that is often used to describe the condition of patients who have not had a successful result with back surgery or spine surgery and have experienced continued pain after surgery.  Patients describe uncontrolled persistent back, back and leg and leg pain with functional insufficiency with or without sciatica after the 10-40% of the spinal surgery. Literature about the FBSS is insufficient, in large part due to the complexity of this entity with variety of the underlying etiology and lack of high-quality clinical trials determining response to treatment.