Nutritional Status Affects Spine Healing

Nutritional status indicates your health status. Factors like serum levels, weight and other issues determine nutritional status. “ABCD” are factors taken into account – Anthropomorphic status (weight/body), Biochemical (blood tests), Clinical (how well the body functions work as checked by a physician) and Dietary (what you eat). OrthoIllinois Chiropractic can discover much about the nutritional status of a McHenry chiropractic patient during the initial clinical McHenry chiropractic examination and set up a treatment plan to deal with any nutritional concerns that are uncovered particularly in patients who may be susceptible to a back surgery or any other surgical intervention for that matter. A good pre-surgical nutritional status will facilitate McHenry post-surgical healing and lessen McHenry post-back surgical problems.Good status also helps healing with non-surgical care!

One effective way to check your McHenry nutritional status is the serum albumin concentration. Researchers discuss how nutritional status influences postsurgical outcomes and healing. Specifically, hypoalbumin levels – low levels under 3.5 g/dL – mark a malnourished state and are indicative of post-surgical recovery complication rates, particularly for patients who experience anterior cervical discectomy and fusion. Patients who have low albumin concentrations before surgery had higher rates of having any major postoperative complication(s) like pulmonary, cardiac and reoperation as well as longer stays in the hospital. (1) In one study, 28% of patients were found to be malnourished and more likely to have a postoperative complication and a longer hospital stay (8.67 days instead of 3.8 days). 14.48% of these spine surgery patients were re-admitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge. Malnourished patients’ re-admission rate (27.5%) was three times that of nourished patients (9.52%). Pre-operative nutritional status is an independent risk factor for re-admission after spine surgery that can surely be remedied before a surgical intervention. (2) OrthoIllinois Chiropractic can coordinate a McHenry blood test to check your levels. OrthoIllinois Chiropractic considers statistics like this and sees how important nutrition is for our McHenry chiropractic patients’ health and healing as well as their spine care. OrthoIllinois Chiropractic is ready to help raise your nutritional status for optimum healing preoperatively, postoperatively and back surgery-preventatively!

Lastly, the nutritional status of spine surgery patients at an orthopedic hospital was gathered using the Nutritional Risk Score 2002 at admission and discharge. Their nutritional status – nutritional risk, malnutrition, overweight and obesity – and nutritional support at the hospital after surgery play influential roles in patient recovery. 88% of patients who were nutritionally at-risk got nutritional support while admitted to the hospital. These nutritional status factors changed: nutritional risk increased from 11.6% to 19.4%; malnutrition status increased from 12.7% to 20.6%; overweight status decreased from 35.9% to 31.0%; and obesity status reduced from 7.41% to 5.79%. Bottomline: the incidence of nutritional risk and malnutrition increased significantly. That’s not good! (3) While these stats may not seem good for the hospital care, they did put the hospital on notice to be more cognizant and ready to help these patients who come in for surgical procedures with a known risk. OrthoIllinois Chiropractic searches for ways to prevent McHenry health issues by looking for them in advance!

OrthoIllinois Chiropractic looks to help McHenry back pain patients avoid back surgery if possible, and OrthoIllinois Chiropractic is also good at directing our back pain patients get into good nutritional and physical shape pre- and post-surgically as needed. OrthoIllinois Chiropractic is ready to work with McHenry back pain patients who want to get into good shape and keep surgery at bay when feasible. It is not always an easy path to a healthy nutritional status, but it’s a worthy one for your physical body’s health and potential healing if surgery is called for as well as when a non-surgical healing approach is chosen.

Count on OrthoIllinois Chiropractic, your back pain specialty practice, to be your McHenry nutritional status guide.