Cost of Spine Surgery in India

Yes, we have specialist spine surgeons and pediatric surgeons also, and I myself do a lot of spine surgery in children — whether they have neural tube defects such as meningocele, Chiari malformation, or tethering of the spinal cord which can cause weakness of the legs. In all those patients we do spine surgeries, also in children who've got scoliosis or hemivertebra deformities, or tumours of the spine. All those patients we have been tackling from the age of 6 months to 18 years of age.

The cost of surgery in our hospital for spinal problems can range anything from $3,500 for a discectomy and decompression to $5,500 or $6,000 for fixation of the spine at one level, and even up to $10,000 for more complicated cases — that's usually the range of costs patients most commonly have to bear. Most of these patients, who come walking because of pain in the neck, arm, or lower back going into the legs, usually stay in the hospital for about three to four days, and in the country for about two weeks.

Yes, we do use intraoperative neuromonitoring — we are one of the very few centres in the country who have been using this quite regularly. We were focusing on minimally invasive spine surgery and spine navigation in this talk because of limited time, but yes, we do have neuromonitoring available to us as well.

Dr. Rajan breaks costs down by complexity: discectomy and decompression costs around $3,500, single-level spinal fixation costs $5,500 to $6,000, and more complex cases such as multi-level correction or major deformity surgery can reach up to $10,000.

Hospital stays are typically three to four days, while the total in-country stay, including pre-surgical evaluation and post-operative follow-up, is approximately two weeks.

No. Dr. Rajan's broader message is that cost should never come before an accurate diagnosis, and patients should first confirm through an integrated spine clinic evaluation that surgery is genuinely needed.