Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection by Sarno John E

Author:Sarno, John E. [Sarno, John E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Health & Fitness, Healing
ISBN: 9780446557689
Google: EnN2sVVZOAIC
Amazon: 0446557684
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2001-03-15T06:00:00+00:00

FOLLOW-UP SURVEYS

An important confidence builder is the fact that most people who have gone through the program have been successful. In 1982 we did a follow-up survey on 177 patients who had been treated between 1978 and 1981. Seventy-six percent were leading normal lives with little or no pain, 8 percent were improved and 16 percent were unchanged. Some of those patients had not had the benefit of lectures and in many other ways the program was not as sophisticated as it is now.

In 1987 a similar follow-up study was done, this time on a group of patients who all had CT scan–documented herniated discs and had the TMS program between 1983 and 1986. This time 88 percent (ninety-six people) were successful, 10 percent were improved and only 2 percent were unchanged.

Still more recently the well-known journalist-writer Tony Schwartz, who was successfully treated in 1986, mentioned in an article he wrote for New York magazine on Dr. Bernie Siegel that he had referred the program to forty patients for treatment and thirty-nine of them were free of pain. I call this Tony Schwartz’s miniseries.

A young colleague, Dr. Michael Sinel, at present assistant director of Outpatient Physical Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, has made the diagnosis and treated about fifty patients. His work is noteworthy because included in his patient population are some who were not necessarily receptive to the idea of a tension-induced disorder, making his job much more difficult. Nevertheless, following the basic concepts enunciated in this book, his preliminanry data indicate that 75 percent of the group have had good to excellent pain resolution and better than 90 percent have experienced significant functional improvement.

I have invited my colleagues at medical meetings to observe the program and would welcome a survey conducted by an outside organization. Statistics as impressive as mine are bound to evoke skepticism in the medical community.

There is reason to believe the statistics will remain favorable, since I now interview patients prior to consultation in order to discourage those from coming who would not be receptive to the diagnosis. The reality is that only a small proportion of the back pain population would be open to the diagnosis and it is a waste of time and effort to try to treat someone who could not accept the TMS diagnosis.

Some critics have said that I get such good results because I only accept patients who believe in my concepts. But I can only work with patients who are reasonably receptive to the idea that their emotions are responsible for their pain. Even so, most of my patients are still skeptical when I first see them. It is my job to convince them of the logic of the diagnosis, because only by acknowledging the role of emotions can we get the brain to stop doing what it is doing. That is not believing—it is learning.

Would a surgeon operate on a patient who was not a good surgical risk? Should I be less selective than a surgeon?

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