 I am Dr Vidyadara Ayas, head of the department and consultant spine surgeon at Manipal Hospital, Bangalore. Let me tell you honestly that there is nowhere in the world that any surgery is without risk. And it is only these amount of surgeries that are being done make it more and more efficient and less and less risky. As of today, if you ask me, risk on an average in any centres of excellence of spine surgery should be less than 1%. And among the 1% risk that you encounter, the most common risk of wound infection, either superficial or deep, which happens no matter what you do, where you are, it is not because it is a surgeon's mistake or patient's mistake, it is just that either the antibiotic is not working or the bacteria is very strong, that it is getting infected. This can happen the commonest and the most troublesome, but this is not going to be a fatal one. It is always the antibiotics which will have to be given and in rare cases we may have to re-operate and clean up the place and sort it out. The second one which is deadly and really scary is the risk of neurological deficits worsening. Now, this risk has been there ever since spine surgery has come into way, but now we have newer equipment such as neuro navigation or neuro monitoring because of which the risk of neurological deficits has reduced to less than 0.1%. Thirdly, you have the risk of other associated problems because of patient's immobility like say patient has got paralysis to begin with before surgery and you do surgery, he may develop pneumonia, he may develop urinary tract infection, he may develop bed sores, he may develop lot of other complications if the rehabilitation is not good. Now, for the patient and this will avoid all the secondary morbidity that the patient can risk himself into and the other things which are beyond doctors is risk of death, risk of ventilation and ICU. This nobody can predict accurately, you don't know if destiny is written, I don't think any doctor can change it and there are some more rarer and rarer complications which can just be enumerated but not in this time.