Back surgery for a prolapsed disk?

[KatyMac]

About 4 yrs ago my dad had this, & the surgery failed and he had to have it re-done.

This year he had it done again, & it has failed again & he is waiting to have it re-done later this month

How common is it for this sort of surgery to fail?

IME pretty common. I was offered it a couple of years ago. I've nursed people who had total or partial laminectomys, or spinal fusion and the failure rate was quite high.
I spoke to the consultant about it and he agreed with me, I did some intense physio and the problem went away. My L5/S1 disc does prolapse occasionally, but not as frequently as before.
I would advise your Dad to consider it carefully. Could he have some physio?

At the moment he cannot stand, sit or lie without being in intense pain

It has been presented as an op that rarely fails

But atm I don't think he has much option.

I had a friend in the same position and he visited a chiropractor, this avoided him the surgery, and he has never had the same issues again.

I found this link

[http://www.city-chiropractic.com/discproblems.html]]

I saw a chiropractor with mine and the manipulation made it worse causing surgery to be needed!

I had two prolapsed discs at the base of my back and 3 snagged facets in my neck (=fucking painful) after a car accident, but wouldn't touch surgery if you paid me... My father had surgery years ago and still has huge problems. I went to a really good physio who manipulated it all and gave me self-help exercises to keep it on form. I have to see her every month for 'maintenance' sessions - but it is really worth it for not having some bone butcher hacking about where nerves are involved.
Really good physios/chiropractors are worht their weight in gold - often a local football/rugby club will have one who does general public too.