a procedureSpinal fusion

Two vertebrae are joined into one bone. The disc between them is removed, a cage or a block of graft is packed into the gap, and screws and rods or a plate hold the segment still while it knits. It is done for instability, for deformity and for nerve compression that recurs. The unit of both surgery and price is the level; the metalwork and the graft are billed separately on most package pages.

Fusion is the spine operation that most resembles a joint replacement in the price list: standardised enough to package, expensive enough to travel for, and quoted per level with the hardware carved out.

Bumrungrad's Spine Institute prices it twice on one page. A transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion at one level is 576,300 baht with two nights in a standard single room, and an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion at one level is 420,000 baht with one night. Both prices stand until 31 December 2026. The lumbar package's exclusion list opens with the line that decides the bill: implant and artificial bone graft.

In England, Practice Plus Group lists an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion at £14,400 on its self-pay page, the same named operation as the Bangkok cervical package, and states nothing about what the figure covers. Australia's Medicare Benefits Schedule sets item 51041, spinal fusion of the anterior column at one motion segment, at $1,295.85 as at 1 July 2026, with items 51042 to 51045 stepping up for two, three, four and five or more segments.

Inference — the Australian ladder is the clearest published statement in this batch that spine surgery is sold by the segment. A quote that names a price without naming the number of levels has left out the multiplier.

Trade practice — fusion also carries an argument the price pages do not: a fused segment throws load onto its neighbours, and the case for motion-preserving disc replacement instead is made on exactly that ground. Both sit on the same Bangkok page, and at the same level in the neck the disc replacement is 48,600 baht dearer than the fusion.

General anaesthesia. For a neck fusion the surgeon works from the front through a crease incision, removes the disc, seats a cage or graft, and plates the two vertebrae; the patient is often up the same day and out the next. For a lumbar interbody fusion the approach is from behind through the foramen, the disc is cleared, the cage is placed and pedicle screws and rods are locked across the segment; Bumrungrad's package books three hours and thirty minutes of theatre and two nights. Bone knits over months, not weeks, and the imaging that confirms it happens at home.

As of 16 September 2026 the fusion prices on this site are 420,000 baht for a one-level cervical fusion and 576,300 for a one-level lumbar fusion in Bangkok, both excluding the implant; £14,400 for the cervical operation in England; and an Australian schedule fee of $1,295.85 for one segment, which buys the surgeon's service and nothing else.

This page describes an operation and the prices published for it. Nothing here is medical advice.