Nutritional Status Affects Spine Healing

Your health status and nutritional status mirror each other. Nutritional status is measured by a mix of factors: serum levels, weight, and other issues. “ABCD” are factors considered – Anthropomorphic status (weight/body), Biochemical (blood tests), Clinical (how well the body functions work as checked by a physician) and Dietary (what you eat). New Roads Chiropractic Center can discover much about the nutritional status of a New Roads chiropractic patient during the first clinical New Roads chiropractic examination and establish a treatment plan to take care of any nutritional concerns that are uncovered particularly in patients who may be at risk for a back surgery or any other surgical intervention for that matter. A good pre-surgical nutritional status will assist New Roads post-surgical healing and lessen New Roads post-back surgical complications.Good status also helps healing with non-surgical care!

One effective way to check your New Roads nutritional status is the serum albumin concentration. Researchers discuss how nutritional status influences postsurgical healing and outcomes. Specifically, hypoalbumin levels – low levels under 3.5 g/dL – mark a malnourished state and are indicative of post-surgical recovery complication rates, especially for patients who experience anterior cervical discectomy and fusion. Low albumin concentrations in patients before surgery had higher rates of experiencing any major postoperative complication(s) like pulmonary, cardiac and reoperation as well as longer stays in the hospital. (1) In one study, malnourished patients accounted for 28% 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) New Roads Chiropractic Center can coordinate a New Roads blood test to check your levels. New Roads Chiropractic Center looks at statistics like this and sees how important nutrition is for our New Roads chiropractic patients’ health and healing as well as their spine care. New Roads Chiropractic Center is prepared to help raise your nutritional status for best 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 significant roles in patient recovery. 88% of patients who had nutritional 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 is not very good! (3) While these stats didn’t place the hospital care in a good light, they did alert the hospital to do more to help these patients who present with a known risk before surgery. New Roads Chiropractic Center looks for ways to prevent New Roads health issues by looking for them in advance!

New Roads Chiropractic Center certainly wants to help New Roads back pain patients avoid back surgery if possible, and New Roads Chiropractic Center is also effective at assisting our back pain patients attain good nutritional and physical shape before and after surgery as required. New Roads Chiropractic Center is ready to cooperate with New Roads back pain patients who desire a healthier nutritional status and keep surgery at bay whenever possible. 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 future healing if surgery is called for as well as when a non-surgical healing approach is used.

Count on New Roads Chiropractic Center, your back pain specialty practice, to be your New Roads nutritional status guide.