Why Some Spinal Fusions Don't Heal

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]The third reason of needing a second spine surgery is that the bones didn't fuse together. So the third reason for needing a um second spine fusion, I should say, is if a fusion is done and the bones don't heal together. And when the bones don't heal together, the screws and rods will loosen over time.

[00:00:17]And sometimes you need uh another surgery to get the bones to heal together. A fusion may not heal for many reasons. One reason could just be simple mechanics. It could be that the screws weren't strong enough. It could be because the bones were weak and so the screws weren't strong enough. Construct itself maybe needed more screws or needed more fixation. Could just be simple mechanics. The other thing that it could be would be bone metabolism.

[00:00:42]Everybody grows and heals bone at a different rate. Um we are still learning as a profession the way to evaluate somebody's ability to grow bone. Right now there's different markers that we check to kind of get some of that idea.

[00:00:56]Probably the most common one that we get is PTH, so parathyroid hormone in vitamin D. This is probably the number one way that I see people have bone healing problems is if they have an issue with um either the vitamin D deficient or they have a parathyroid hormone problem. There's probably a million other like, you know, ways on that spectrum. Third one is infection.

[00:01:19]Sometimes if somebody has an infection, it can be a low-grade infection. This could also be a cause for the bones not to heal