Unnecessary surgeries

Due to our health care system here in America, patients need to be informed and hesitant when it comes to pricey, complicated and potentially life-altering medical procedures. That matter was recently pointed to by a new USA Today report showing that tens of thousands of people in the United States frequently undergo surgery that isn’t necessary.

Any surgery is dangerous, even minor procedures come with major risks, such as bleeding, blood clots, infections, and damage to other organs. So it’s fundamental to know if surgery is really necessary or beneficial.

More and more patients are becoming victims to predators who enrich themselves by billing insurers for operations that are not medically justified.

Unnecessary surgeries might account for 10% to 20% of all operations in some specialties, including a wide range of cardiac procedures — not only stents, but also angioplasty and pacemaker implants — as well as many spinal surgeries. Knee replacements, hysterectomies, and cesarean sections are among the other surgical procedures performed more often than needed, according to a review of in-depth studies and data generated by both government and academic sources.

“I am seeing more and more patients who are told to have operations they don’t need,” says the spinal study’s author, Nancy Epstein, a neurosurgeon and chief of Neurosurgical Spine and Education at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y.

“If patients have operations they don’t need, they risk having major problems — infections, paralysis, heart attacks, strokes,” Epstein says. Yet she notes that virtually no data are collected on complications or patient injuries from unnecessary surgery. “Nobody reports the complications, so finding the real morbidity and mortality of these procedures is extremely difficult.”

USA Today broke down these unnecessary surgeries into three groups: the immoral, the incompetent and the indifferent.

Experts and patients alike say questioning a doctor’s decision to operate — by researching the suggested procedure, asking for nonsurgical options and getting a second opinion — can help reduce the number of unnecessary surgeries.

“We expect the physician to know what’s best for a patient,” William Root, the chief compliance officer at Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals, told USA Today. “We put so much faith and confidence in our physicians, (and) most of them deserve it. But when one of them is wrong or goes astray, it can do a lot of damage.”

Unnecessary surgeries to reconsider

Stents for Stable Angina

Spinal Fusion for Stenosis

Hysterectomy for Uterine Fibroids

Knee Arthrososcopy for Osteoarthritis

Pacemaker Implants