Journal of neurosurgery. Spine
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Few data exist regarding long-term outcomes after cervical corpectomy for spondylotic cervical myelopathy and radiculomyelopathy. In this retrospective review, long-term radiographic outcomes are reported for 130 patients after 1- or 2-level cervical corpectomy for spondylotic myelopathy or radiculomyelopathy. ⋯ Long-term follow-up data in our veteran population support cervical corpectomy as an effective, long-lasting treatment for spondylotic myelopathy of the cervical spine. Use of CTMCs without end caps was associated with statistically significant increased postoperative kyphotic angulation and chronic pain. Despite an increase in focal kyphosis over time, regional cervical sagittal lordotic alignment had increased at the latest follow-up. Further investigation will include the association of chronic neck pain and postoperative kyphosis, and high fusion rates among a veteran population of heavy smokers.
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Present attempts to control health care costs focus on reducing the incidence of complications and hospital-acquired conditions (HACs). One approach uses restriction or elimination of hospital payments for HACs. Present approaches assume that all HACs are created equal and that payment restrictions should be applied uniformly. Patient factors, and especially patient comorbidities, likely impact complication incidence. The relationship of patient comorbidities and complication incidence in spine surgery has not been prospectively reported. ⋯ Comorbidities significantly increase the risk of perioperative complications. An increasing number of comorbidities in an individual patient significantly increases the risk of a perioperative adverse event. Patient factors significantly impact the relative risk of HACs and perioperative complications.
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Sacrectomy positioning must balance surgical exposure, localization, associated operative procedures, and patient safety. Poor positioning may increase hemorrhage, risk of blindness, and skin breakdown. ⋯ A positioning protocol using head suspension on an open radiolucent frame facilitates oncological sacral surgery with reasonable patient morbidity. Morbid obesity and procedure times in excess of 10 hours are risk factors for positioning-related complications. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first report of surgical positioning morbidity in this patient population.
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The aim of this study was to evaluate the results and effectiveness of bilateral decompression via a unilateral approach in the treatment of lumbar degenerative spondylolisthesis (DS). ⋯ Postoperative clinical improvement and radiological findings clearly demonstrated that the unilateral approach for treating 1-level and multilevel lumbar spinal stenosis with DS is a safe, effective, and minimally invasive method in terms of reducing the need for stabilization.
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Spinal surgical outcome studies rely on patient-reported outcome (PRO) measurements to assess treatment effect. A shortcoming of these questionnaires is that the extent of improvement in their numerical scores lack a direct clinical meaning. As a result, the concept of minimum clinical important difference (MCID) has been used to measure the critical threshold needed to achieve clinically relevant treatment effectiveness. As utilization of spinal fusion has increased over the past decade, so has the incidence of adjacent-segment degeneration following index lumbar fusion, which commonly requires revision laminectomy and extension of fusion. The MCID remains uninvestigated for any PROs in the setting of revision lumbar surgery for adjacent-segment disease (ASD). ⋯ Adjacent-segment disease revision surgery-specific MCID is highly variable based on calculation technique. The MDC approach with HTI anchor appears to be most appropriate for calculation of MCID after revision lumbar fusion for ASD because it provided a threshold above the 95% CI of the unimproved cohort (greater than the measurement error), was closest to the mean change score reported by improved and satisfied patients, and was not significantly affected by choice of anchor. Based on this method, MCID following ASD revision lumbar surgery is 3.8 points for BP-VAS score, 2.4 points for LP-VAS score, 6.8 points for ODI, 8.8 points for SF-12 PCS, 9.3 points for SF-12 MCS, and 0.35 quality-adjusted life-years for EQ-5D.