Spinal surgery rehabilitation

Recovery shouldn't start the day you leave hospital.

RehabCompanion prepares you in the weeks before your spinal surgery, then guides you day by day through the months afterwards — with the right exercises for the stage you're actually at, and your progress visible to your care team between appointments.

Your program is set with your clinician — built around your procedure, your surgery date and the goals you agree together. The app helps you follow it; your clinical team stays in charge of it.

Open my program → Your clinic will give you an access code.

Currently available to selected patients at Sydney Spine Institute — Burwood and Liverpool, NSW.

Your program follows your recovery

BEFORE

Preparation

Build strength and practise the movements you'll need afterwards.

SURGERY

Around your operation

Your hospital team leads. The app steps back.

WEEKS 1–4

Early recovery

Gentle movement within your surgeon's restrictions.

WEEKS 4–8

Returning to activity

Strength and endurance work as restrictions lift.

8 WEEKS +

Ongoing recovery

Progressive loading toward what you want to get back to.

A plan that changes as you do — not a printed sheet.

Most patients leave hospital with a handout and a follow-up appointment six weeks away. RehabCompanion fills that gap.

One tap a day

No reps to remember or forms to fill in. Tap once when you've done your session — or adjust it if you did something different.

The right stage, automatically

Your exercises change as you move through recovery, anchored to your actual surgery date and your surgeon's restriction window.

Your team stays in the loop

Your check-in scores and progress are visible to your treating clinicians between appointments, so nothing quietly goes wrong for six weeks.

The weeks before surgery are usually wasted. They don't have to be.

Preparation is the part almost nobody supports — and it's the part you have the most time and capacity for.

Usually

  • Wait for the operation date
  • Learn to move safely after surgery, when it already hurts
  • A handout on discharge day
  • Next real check-in: six weeks

With RehabCompanion

  • Structured conditioning in the lead-up
  • Practise getting in and out of bed before you need to
  • Know what the first six weeks will involve, and plan for them
  • Daily guidance from day one home

Clinician-designed, and measured properly.

The exercise content, dosing and restriction windows were written and confirmed by a rehabilitation clinician, against published clinical sources — not generated from a template. Surgical review of each pathway is underway.

Validated outcome measures

Recovery is tracked with recognised instruments — the Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire, the Patient-Specific Functional Scale, and the Numeric Pain Rating Scale — not a made-up score.

Principled progression

Loading follows ACSM guidance, including a cap on how quickly any exercise can increase week to week. The app won't let a good day turn into a setback.

Nothing invented

Where a protocol hasn't been confirmed for a procedure, the app says so and shows nothing, rather than filling the gap with a plausible guess.

Backed by evidence

A Cochrane review found that starting supervised exercise 4–6 weeks after lumbar disc surgery led to a faster reduction in pain and disability than no rehabilitation.
Ostelo RWJG et al., Rehabilitation after lumbar disc surgery, Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2008, CD003007.

For clinics and surgical practices

RehabCompanion is designed to sit alongside your existing pathway, not replace it. You set the program content and the milestones; patients get structure between appointments; you get visibility into who's actually doing the work.

Your protocols, your restriction windows, your dosing
Flags when a patient goes quiet or stops progressing
Outcome data collected consistently, not ad hoc
Enquire about your clinic →

This address is for clinics and practices. If you are a patient, please contact your own clinician at Sydney Spine Institute — this inbox is not monitored for clinical questions, and not at all outside business hours. In an emergency, call 000.

Currently in limited pilot

RehabCompanion is being trialled with a small number of selected patients at Sydney Spine Institute (Burwood and Liverpool, NSW). Access is by invitation — if you're a patient, your clinician will give you an access code along with your program.

Using the app is voluntary and separate from your surgical consent. It supports the care you're already receiving; it doesn't replace advice from the people treating you.

If you have symptoms that concern you, contact your care team directly. In an emergency, call 000.