Neurocirugia
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The procedure of surgical treatment of lumbar disc herniation belongs to the group of clinical practice procedures that have a great repercussion on health care systems. The high prevalence of this disease, the management variability and the possibility of improvement, explain the great interest in the evaluation of the quality of both treatment procedure and outcomes. ⋯ This method established a significant correlation between STQ and clinical and presurgical variables, as well as between STQ and pain and activity after surgery.
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Clinical or critical pathways are a useful tool in the continuous quality improvement. They develop the main characteristics of the quality programs: implementation of the evidence based medicine, increase staff and patient satisfaction and adequacy in hospital costs. This is the application of evidence-based medicine to a process management and it promotes integration of clinical guides, protocols and algorithms. ⋯ Critical pathways are still under development and changing continuously. Nevertheless their impact on improving patient care and satisfaction, and resource consumption is already evident, and it constitutes a major aim to work in its complete development.