Elective lumbar spine surgery is among the more frequently delayed orthopaedic procedures in the Australian public hospital system. The extent to which prolonged preoperative wait time affects the eventual postoperative response remains incompletely characterised. This prospective single-centre cohort study examined six-week postoperative outcomes in 23 patients (mean age 58.0 years; 52.2% male) undergoing elective lumbar spine surgery at an Australian public tertiary orthopaedic unit, with preoperative and postoperative assessments using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS), the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), and the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). Median preoperative wait was 64 days (range 15–288). Paired analyses demonstrated large, statistically and clinically significant improvements across all outcome instruments: composite VAS decreased by 4.4 points (p<0.001), ODI by 20.6 percentage points (p=0.005), and SF-36 component summary scores by 7.4–7.5 T-score points (both p<0.05). At a 2-point VAS minimum clinically important difference threshold, 81% of patients achieved clinically meaningful improvement and none worsened. Longer preoperative wait time was consistently associated with smaller postoperative improvement across VAS (r = -0.43), ODI (r = -0.41), and SF-36 physical component summary (r = -0.39); individual tests did not reach statistical significance, but the consistency of direction and magnitude across three independent instruments suggests a real effect. These findings indicate that surgery delivers substantial benefit in this cohort, and provide hypothesis-generating evidence that prolonged wait time may attenuate that benefit. Confirmation in larger cohorts is required.