In the outpatient setting, I often encounter patients with lumbar disc herniation who will ask: Should I have surgery? My answer to patients is that imaging information often does not parallel clinical symptoms. It is not the case that if the imaging is severe, the clinical symptoms are severe. If the imaging is not serious, the clinical symptoms are not serious. Therefore, my advice is: 1) If the imaging is severe and you experience severe clinical symptoms, consider surgical treatment. 2) If the imaging is not severe and you experience severe clinical symptoms, meet with your doctor to discuss further diagnosis or even treatment. 3) If the imaging is severe but you experience less severe clinical symptoms, discuss with your doctor, and in my opinion, keep a close eye on it. 4) If the imaging is not severe but you experience less severe clinical symptoms, discuss with your doctor, and in my opinion, keep a close eye on the patient. If the imaging is not serious and the clinical symptoms are not serious, then conservative treatment should be given. Some patients say: I am a layman, I don’t understand, doctor give me the decision. I think that the patient first of all did not take the process of treatment as a learning process. As the saying goes: a long time to become a doctor. Many patients suffer from a certain disease, they will learn from all aspects of the disease related knowledge. The process of healing is also a learning process. Secondly, they are not responsible for themselves. I believe that all doctors are good and work hard to relieve patients’ pain. But the doctor’s knowledge of the disease is also subject to a variety of conditions, such as often not many doctors, in the imaging is serious, even if the clinical symptoms are not serious, in order to prevent the recurrence of symptoms, do not appear cauda equina symptoms, etc., advocating the early and aggressive, thorough treatment. At this point, without knowledge of the disease, it is easy to accept the advice and receive a thorough surgical treatment. And for a surgeon with surgical experience, there is mostly no problem in performing a thorough surgical operation. And after a thorough surgical operation, the vast majority of patients can get good results and return to their past work and life. However, the risks of surgical treatment are much greater than those of conservative, interventional, and minimally invasive treatments. Once the outcome is not good, it is very difficult to remedy the situation. It can be seen that the patient’s own experience of the clinical symptoms determines whether or not to undergo surgical treatment. Therefore, the patient has the right to decide whether or not to implement surgical treatment, and the decision to operate on a patient with lumbar disc herniation should be made by the patient himself.