• Santiago Vildoza, Juan Pablo Cabrera, Alfredo Guiroy, Charles Carazzo, Martin Gagliardi, Andrei Fernandes Joaquim, and Gaston Camino-Willhuber.
• Orthopaedic and Traumatology Department, Institute of Orthopedics "Carlos E. Ottolenghi," Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• World Neurosurg. 2022 Feb 1; 158: e423-e428.

BackgroundReporting complications and/or adverse events after spinal surgical procedures enables the estimation of their prevalence and of their impact on patient outcomes. However, the documentation of complications is relatively infrequent and highly heterogeneous. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quality of complication and adverse event reporting in spinal surgery literature.MethodsA systematic review of the literature from 5 international, peer-reviewed, indexed spinal journals was performed. Included studies were published between January and December 2020 and reported the surgical results of spinal procedures. Data on the level of evidence and study design were collected and analyzed as well as whether the studies were single-center or multicenter studies. The quality of complication reports was evaluated through a 5-item checklist, with 5 questions divided into 3 parts: definition, evaluation, and report.ResultsComplications associated with spinal surgical procedures were reported in 292 studies. According to the level of evidence, significantly higher reporting quality was seen in level I and II studies compared with level III and IV studies (P = 0.003). Regarding the 5-item checklist, 49% (143/292) of studies fulfilled the definition section, 16.4% (48/292) fulfilled the evaluation section, and 92% (270/292) fulfilled the report section.ConclusionsOverall quality assessment when reporting complications in surgical spinal studies showed that only 13% (38/292) of publications that reported complications as part of the outcomes exhibited all items of the 5-item checklist. Additionally, significantly better reports were observed in level I studies compared with level II-IV studies.Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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