What happens if you lift too soon after spinal surgery?

August 18, 2024 5:19 PM

Asking for a friend who's getting impatient with his recovery period.

The doctors told him to wear a brace and avoid lifting, long stretches of sitting, and bending/twisting motions for six weeks. It's now been just over a month, and he really wants to become more active again. Will he be able to tell before he does any damage, or could he get badly hurt again?

posted by toucan to Health & Fitness (7 answers total)

If he wants to be more active he needs to have a long conversation with this medical team. Not all spinal surgeries are the same and risks can vary pretty dramatically from that's not a good idea because it might hurt to paralyzed.
posted by AlexiaSky at 5:27 PM on August 18 [2 favorites]

Prior to abdominal surgery, I researched the recommendations for the guidance about resuming physical activity and found that they were both all over the place and had little to no research backing. When my surgeon gave her extremely conservative recommendation, I shared my research and suggested that it was likely safe to resume activity much sooner. She basically said that was true, but there is very little harm to waiting, and potentially a large downside. I would think the potential downsides would be even higher in the case of spinal surgery. Unless he is going to lose his job or or face some other significant cost from waiting to resume activity, I would suggest following the doctors' advice.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 5:38 PM on August 18 [1 favorite]

If there is a fusion element to the surgery, the risk is that “prohibited” activity breaks up nascent fusion spots, which then might not fuse at all afterwards.

If he doesn’t want to risk another surgery to fix the fusion failures, follow the recs.

ETA: He would not be able to tell whether the fusion is failing or not. The hardware is currently keeping everything in place.
posted by Huggiesbear at 5:38 PM on August 18 [3 favorites]

No problem, assuming you can switch over to your redundant backup spine in case of issues. Oh, your friend doesn’t have one of those? Hmm.
posted by zamboni at 6:08 PM on August 18 [4 favorites]

Really depends on whether we're talking about a laminectomy or a multi-level instrumentation. The failure modes are rather different.
posted by Dashy at 6:10 PM on August 18 [1 favorite]

Depends on the specifics, but: a new hernia! Which would be painful, could require additional surgery, and would accelerate disc degeneration in the long run. Your spine needs time to heal after surgery and it's not something that you can really speed up.
posted by storpsmop at 9:10 PM on August 18

Uhh, this is just insane to me. I had a different, but somewhat similar surgery (anterior cervical discectomy and fusion) 18 months ago. It is major, delicate surgery and I would never have put my recovery at risk by not following my surgeon’s instructions to the letter.

As for whether he could do damage without warning - I am fairly confident the answer is yes. I’m basing this on the fact that, to this day, I don’t know what caused my spinal injury in the first place.
posted by Salamander at 7:33 AM on August 19 [1 favorite]