[Second opinion on spine surgery : Indication rarely confirmed and conservative treatment options are worthwhile].

Background: Second opinion (SO) on spine surgery was recently implemented as a statutory right in Germany. Prior to this, one health insurer did offer SO to its policy holders including advice on additional conservative treatment options.
Objectives: Which treatment recommendations did 522 patients receive in an interdisciplinary multimodal assessment (IMA) as part of a SO by 4 teams comprising physician, physio- and psychotherapist and what were the long-term consequences?
Methods: Second opinions under a selective contract between insurer and back pain centers were evaluated based on patient-related anamnesis and interdisciplinary multimodal clinical findings including treatment recommendations and patient reports after about 2 years.
Results: Initially, spine surgery recommendation was confirmed in 15/522 (2.9%) patients (C-SS) versus 507 recommendations against. C‑SS patients were older, male, and had current high pain intensity more frequently, their well-being and quality of life were more often considerably impaired and from the perspective of the team morphological findings were stronger. Younger and female patients with higher pain grade and less previous surgery, but more visits to medical specialties received more often a recommendation of an interdisciplinary treatment option (ITO) versus standard care (SC). After 2 years, all 15 C-SS patients and 146 randomly selected patients were contacted. Of these 161 patients, 29 (18%) had undergone spine surgery. The long-term outcome was best in ITO patients without surgery, followed by the C‑SS after surgery and SC patients without surgery.
Discussion: Most patients undergoing spine surgery make their decision based on the information that they are provided without requesting a SO. As in comparative studies, most patients with a confirmed surgical indication underwent surgery, while some did not. Some patients underwent surgery inspite of recommendations against-after considering conservative therapy recommendations by the IMA. In retrospect, sound advice and an intensive conservative therapy offer seem necessary and reasonable.
(© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Medizin Verlag GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature.)