Appalling. My brother had just this sort of attitude from his GP. He kept telling his doctor of back pain. They did nothing. When he collapsed and had to be hospitalised. He was diagnosed as having Cauda equina syndrome. Then even after spending three months paralysed on his back recovering from surgery he complain to his new GP about more back pain, and was accused of being a whinger. They finally relented to an MRI scan just to put his mind at rest. The MRI showed that he had two prolapsed discs. So it looks like my brother will be suing a pile of doctors for medical neglect.

Sorry to hear about your brother and hope he gets well. But things need to be put into perspective.

1. 90% of back pain is mechanical - it's the 10% that you need to look at and assess. No idea if your brother's GP did this or not.
2. If you scanned the spines of 100 people with no back pain, something like half would have evidence of a prolapsed disc. The correlation between scan results and symptoms is poor and I've seen many situations where a back pain magically resolves after a normal MRI scan.
3. Cauda equina is incredibly rare (1 in 100, 000) but also occurs over hours, not days/weeks/months.
4. You can scan people with back pain, have an MRI scan showing a slipped disc, and the majority of patients don't go on to have spinal surgery. Even surgery is fraught with problems and people can have chronic pain and disability.
5. 50% of doctors will be below average.

I've had one patient who was 18, had extensive back surgery, came in with back pain and yet refused to take any of the painkillers we were offering her. She wanted medical strength cannabis and threw a hissy fit when we refused. She wound staff up to the point where even the consultant snapped. In the end, I allowed her to have ward leave and said she could do whatever she wanted off the hospital premises.

Also links to original article please?

Link as requested.

I also appreciate that back pain is also a top choice for people wanting a day off as it is so hard to diagnose anyway. I think that the doctors might have been less willing to investigate because of their past experience. My brother had been complaining of pain for weeks but when it happened it was very fast and struck him while in the shower. My brother is in constant pain and the consultant is wondering about surgery because the two prolapsed discs are at the site of the previous surgery, so they will have to go through scar tissue. So it is pain management right now.

Yes it is a very rare condition but at least the surgeon had experience of it so knew what he was doing.

What is really annoying him is that even though he has won an appeal for disability benefits and his consultant has just signed him off work for two years ATOS want him to go in for another medical assessment, only 8 weeks after winning his appeal.