• Katja Petrowski, Desiree Ritzka, Patrick Fröhner, and Mario Leimert.
• Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, Clinic and Policlinic for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Medicine Mainz, Mainz, Germany; Department of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden, Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany. Electronic address: Kpetrows@uni-mainz.de.
• World Neurosurg. 2019 Sep 1; 129: e436-e443.

BackgroundA large proportion of the population suffers from chronic back pain. For optimal treatment, the question arises which patients would benefit from conservative therapy and for whom lumbar disc surgery is most appropriate. It seems reasonable to analyze the impact of paraclinical parameters on the operation outcome to identify patients who would benefit less from surgery or need special pre-/postoperative medical care.Materials And MethodsFrom March 2012 to July 2014, 32 patients were treated via microscopically supported interlaminar fenestration and discectomy at the Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden. One day before the operation, a cortisol survey was made during the stress response of the Trier Social Stress Test. At the same time, a survey of relevant questionnaires was conducted by which the postoperative symptom experience was made operational and comparable with the evaluation of the same information thirty days afterwards.ResultsIt could be shown that there is a connection between cortisol reactivity and the pain burden following operations. Patients with a greater cortisol reaction under stress exposition partially experienced more intense postoperative pain than the patients with a lower cortisol reaction. However, this relationship could only be explained by single significant results, whereas further calculations could not produce any significance.ConclusionsCortisol reactivity seems to be associated with pain development. The inconsistent findings in empiricism as well as in this investigation are indicative of a complex association of postoperative pain and cortisol reactivity, which needs to be examined further.Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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