@roma76 Welcome to Connect. I am a spine surgery patient, and had a cervical fusion that for me took away all my pain. Of course, a surgical experience is different for every patient. Generally speaking, the sooner decompression surgery corrects a problem, the less chance there is for permanent nerve damage. If nerves have been compressed a long time, they may be painful after surgery, and nerves take a very long to heal. Lumbar surgery is a harder recovery than cervical surgery. There is also healing the surgical path and with lumbar surgery, they are cutting through more muscle to get to the spine. My experience was that surgery immediately resolved all the pain that was generated by compression in my spine, and what was left was the pain from the surgical path. Sometimes, lumbar spine patients go through rehab after surgery. That would be a good question to ask your surgeon. Often they can't promise to relieve pain, and they promise to improve function.