Treatment Overview

About Spinal Fusion — What You Should Know

You may have been told that surgery — specifically spinal fusion — could help your chronic low back pain.

Spinal fusion has clear indications in certain conditions (such as spondylolisthesis with instability, unstable fractures, or tumors). However, for non-specific chronic low back pain — where no structural cause can be clearly identified — the evidence does not support fusion as a first-line treatment.

A long-term follow-up (over 11 years) of three major clinical trials found that for non-specific chronic low back pain, spinal fusion produced no clinically meaningful difference compared to comprehensive rehabilitation.

For more detail, see Surgery for Low Back Pain.