GOLFERS PLAY BETTER AFTER SPINE FUSION (Orthopedics this Week)
Golfers Play Same or BETTER After Spinal Fusion
While you won’t want to undergo surgery just to improve your golf swing, new research from Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush (MOR) has filled a void in the golf-related spine literature. Dr. Frank Phillips, Section Head of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery and Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Rush, tells OTW about the first study examining outcomes of lumbar fusion in golfers. “There is no data in the literature that discusses golf and spine fusion surgery; there is no clinical data at all regarding return to play. And yet patients commonly ask their surgeon, ‘When am I going to be back on the golf course?’
“My colleagues and I examined data from one and two-level lumbar fusions I performed over a two year period. Our goals were to determine the ability of golfers to return to play and to find out what factors might predict their return to golf. Patients completed questionnaires asking if they had played golf before or after surgery, and inquiring about the factors that led them to decide to undergo the procedure, what limited them in terms of swing before surgery, when they ...
