You might want to repost this on the back pain forum.

As for your question, you are 100% correct that your sister-in-law should have a course of physical therapy.

Anyone who has had spine surgery should have at least 6-10 weeks of physical therapy as soon as they are able to post op. How quickly after spine surgery should physical therapy start, depends on the type of spine surgery they had.

There are many, many reasons that physical therapy is important.

As you pointed out, aiding in breaking up any surgical scar tissue around the incision line is important and that is usually done with ultrasound and massage.

Also, it is important to get those muscles moving again and moving correctly.

As with anyone who has had spine surgery, prior to the surgery, one is in a great deal of pain. Because of that pain, muscles are not being used correctly, the patient has not been moving correctly and been over compensating by using some muscles and not using others.

To equal that incorrect movement and to strengthen those muscles that have become weak from lack of use or proper use, physical therapy is important.

It is also vitally important that the post op spine patient learn how to do core exercises to strengthen the core muscles to keep the spine strong and the rest of the muscles moving correctly. It is important to learn to do these core exercises correctly and to continue to do them at least twice a day for the rest of your life.

It is also important to learn how to properly move after spine surgery and to be sure that the patient bends properly, stoops properly, turns and moves properly and properly learns to pic objects up,including heavy objects.

By learning these things correctly, it helps to keep the muscles strong, instead of staying weak and causing further injury to the spine.

It's unfortunate that your SIL's doctor doesn't believe in physical therapy as it is highly likely that she will injure her back further and suffer the consequences of not having physical therapy.

It's also unfortunate that there are still spine surgeons that don't believe in physical therapy after spine surgery and their patients suffer the long term consequences of that lack of physical therapy. Many of them end up being "frequent flyers" in their spine surgeon's office for further surgery that could have been prevented if they had given orders for physical therapy for their patients.

Fran