@janagain Jan, There are no rules about needing to tell surgeons you are getting other opinions. Good surgeons should expect this and not be uncomfortable about other surgeons challenging their opinion. You are looking for the overlap and general agreement among opinions that you are on the right course. It is an elective decision and as a patient, that is in your hands. Multiple opinions gives you, the patient, the education and confidence to make the decision. That is how it should work, but there can be doctors who miss the diagnosis as it was in my case, but I knew so much about why I had my symptoms and when I found medical literature that my case aligned with, I knew I was right. I had only one surgeon in agreement with my opinion and he understood the reasons for the diagnosis in the medical literature like my case, so I was confident this was the right solution.

Surgeons don't promise to resolve pain or that your function will get better. A lot depends on how much damage or permanent damage has already occurred and that is hard to access before decompression. There are a lot of other unknowns with other health conditions and patient compliance with after surgery recommendations. We are all different. Surgeons can give you their statistics of success with a particular procedure and should be able to tell you how your age and health status would affect your potential success.

As for emergency surgery, if you arrived at the emergency room with a broken spine that was a life threatening risk to breathing and heart function or brain function or paralysis, that would be an emergency to take a patient right into surgery. When you've been living with spinal cord compression or nerve compression with a deteriorating spine, it is unlikely that would elevate the case to having emergency surgery right after you get to the emergency room. My broken ankle qualified for emergency surgery on arrival at the hospital because you can't leave a broken bone sticking out of a wound with a huge risk of infection that could result in limb loss down the road. The surgery that day only cleaned and debrided the wound placing the bone inside, but did not set the bones, and and external cage outside the ankle. Fixation surgery came 2 weeks later in a planned surgery after swelling had subsided a bit.

Getting on a surgeon's surgery schedule is likely going to be a few weeks to a month or more out depending on how far out they schedule and how they access the urgency of each case.

Judging the experience of an older surgeon vs a younger one should really be about their personal success rates and the volume of similar procedures they have done, so ask that question. Newer surgeons with more recent training may know other newer ways to solve the problem or about relevant research . I wondered this too myself, and my surgeon had 10 to 11 years experience at the time of my surgery which probably includes surgical residency and fellowship, and 4 years experience as a full surgeon and teaching at Mayo. I thought of him as a younger surgeon. I do know that being a surgeon and leaning over a table is hard on surgeon's backs and that can lead to their retirement if they develop spine problems themselves. From what I've noticed online, it seems like early career surgeons are out there more at spine conferences and learning instead of settling into private practice somewhere, but that may not be accurate since I am not attending the conferences. I think being connected to a respected teaching medical center makes a difference in the quality of the surgeons on staff, but of course there is a lot to consider, so you can't generalize . You have to consider each surgical opinion for it's own merit and for what track record the doctor brings with them.

Knowing the time needed for scheduling may help you decide which surgeon you want to consider for the job. I would not make a decision based solely on who can schedule the patient sooner, but you need to take this into account while waiting for appointments for tests or other surgical consultations. You should reach a point where it just seems and feels right to proceed with a particular surgeon and you have to be able to trust them completely, because you will trust them with your life by gong forward.

Jennifer