Jeff LangmaidFounder, The Evidence Based Chiropractor

20 Years Pain-Free. Then This 😩

17 Oct 2026 · 0 min

Watch on YouTube

0:28

In this segment, Jeff Langmaid raises a clinical question about whether a vertebral level that has been surgically fused can later become a source of pain due to its endplates. He references a case study of a 55‑year‑old man who underwent an L5‑S1 interbody fusion in 1995. The patient enjoyed 15‑20 years of being pain‑free before experiencing a recurrence of symptoms. Langmaid highlights that the study investigated whether the fused vertebral endplates themselves might be generating the new pain, prompting a re‑examination of long‑term outcomes after spinal fusion procedures.

What if the painful vertebra level that's already fused can actually have end plates that are causing pain? That's really the question, and that's what they were looking at. So this study was at a patient, 55-year-old guy, had an L5-S1 interbody fusion all the way back in the 1900s, as they say, in 1995. And he did not have pain continuously from 1995. He actually had about 15 to 20 years of no pain, and then he started to see things start to come back.