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The week's question
In March 2025, in the thread "Re: OT, out", Umm asked the members: "Do you think it is because America is made up of magical soil that makes businesses based in America magically profitable?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Author: Dope1 ⎊  😊 😞
Number: of 86256 
Subject: Back and shoulder surgery is often useless
Date: 09/28/26 1:05 PM
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economist.com - Back and shoulder surgery is often worse than useless

https://archive.is/j6oeD

Of ten common orthopaedic procedures, a specialty which accounts for a quarter of all operations in Britain and a similar share in America, only three—for carpal tunnel and total replacement of knees and hips—offer outcomes that are clearly superior to non-operative care. Six, including common ones like lumbar-spine decompression, are no better than drugs, physiotherapy or just Father Time. Similarly, roughly two-thirds of excised appendices could have been fixed with antibiotics and many prostates, around 100,000 of which are operated on in Europe each year, are better off with watchful waiting. The list goes on.

My mom let some surgeon fuse part of her spine when all she needed was posture work and lots of PT. Would have saved her years of pain and a far lower quality of life.

Surgeons must therefore be taught, starting in medical school and then by their mentors in what remains an apprenticeship-based craft, to present patients with a range of options and choose the best one together rather than dictating it from on high. Such “shared decision-making” has become common among clinicians but remains alien to many surgeons. It is in everyone’s interest to make it standard.
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This community has written 86,214 posts about US Policy. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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