Brook I. Martin

TL;DR: Age- and sex-adjusted self-reported measures of mental health, physical functioning, work or school limitations, and social limitations among adults with spine problems were worse in 2005 than in 1997, and spine-related expenditures increased substantially from 1997 to 2005, without evidence of corresponding improvement in self-assessed health status.

TL;DR: Examining trends in use of different types of stenosis operations and the association of complications and resource use with surgical complexity found that in 2007, compared with decompression, simple fusion and complex fusion were associated with increased risk of major complications, 30-day mortality, and resourceUse.

TL;DR: This work summarized published data from the 2002 National Health Interview Survey on the prevalence of back pain and compared it with earlier surveys, finding that prevalence generally declined with greater levels of education and increasing income.

TL;DR: Lumbar fusion rates rose even more rapidly in the 90s than in the 80s, and the most rapid increases followed the approval of new surgical implants and were much greater than increases in other major orthopedic procedures.

TL;DR: There is a need for a better understanding of the basic science of pain mechanisms, more rigorous and independent trials of many treatments, a stronger regulatory stance toward approval and post-marketing surveillance of new drugs and devices for chronic pain, and a chronic disease model for managing chronic back pain.