Why is fusion poor for back pain/good radiculopathy?

[ans]

I'm not an ADR candidate due to facets.

My pain mgt. doc at UCLA said re: my pain that "this is as good as it's going to get"; I did not ask if he was thinking re: post-surgery.

But I'm thinking of articles I have read that say fusion is better for radicular pain than for discogram-confirmed spine pain. I don't get it but appreciate "stabs" (no pun)/hypotheses.

This may seem incredibly stupid but is the entire annulus taken out for the fused level? Hmm, maybe one problem is that (I"m reading Filler's book) it's damned difficult to understand all pain generators.

Thanks gang.

ans