The Complications of Spinal Surgery

In January of 2012 a study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Spine that studied the mortality rate and complication rate in adults undergoing complex spinal surgery.  This included hospital deaths, unplanned second surgeries, wound infections requiring re-operation and hospital re-admission during the same calendar year as the original surgery.  They also examined adverse events during surgery and after surgery, as well as hospital length of stay.  Nine hundred forty-two (942) patients were studied over a 12-month period. 
The study reported that the average length of stay in the hospital was 13.5 days.  Eighty-seven percent (87%) of the patients had at least one documented complication.  Fourteen deaths (14) were reported during the study.  The rate of adverse events during surgery was 10.5% and the rate after surgery was 73.5%.  The study concluded that major spinal surgery is associated with a high rate of adverse events, and that the true complexity of this surgery may be greatly underestimated.