The spine journal : official journal of the North American Spine Society
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
A minimum of 5-year follow-up after lumbar transforaminal epidural steroid injections in patients with lumbar radicular pain due to intervertebral disc herniation.
Patients with lumbosacral radiculopathy from an intervertebral disc herniation are frequently treated by transforaminal epidural steroid injections (TFESIs). The long-term outcomes of these patients are poorly described. ⋯ Despite a high success rate at 6 months, the majority of subjects experienced a recurrence of symptoms at some time during the subsequent 5 years. Fortunately, few reported current symptoms, and a small minority required additional injections, surgery, or opioid pain medications. Lumbar disc herniation is a disease that can be effectively treated in the short-term by TFESI or surgery, but long-term recurrence rates are high regardless of treatment received.
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Total lumbar disc replacement (TDR) intends to avoid fusion-related negative side effects by means of motion preservation. Despite their widespread use, the adequate quality and quantity of motion, as well as the correlation between radiographic data with the patient's clinical symptomatology, remains to be established. Long-term data are lacking in particular. ⋯ The present data reveal an increased GLL resulting from a lordotic shift of the index segment, which was strongly correlated with the applied implant lordosis. This lordotic shift was accompanied by a compensatory reduction of lordosis at the cranially adjacent segment. A gradual and statistically significant decline of the device mobility was noted over time which, however, did not negatively impact the patient's clinical symptomatology. Although the present long-term investigation provides additional insight into longitudinal radiographic changes and their influence on the patient's clinical symptomatology following TDR, the adequate quality and quantity of motion with artificial motion-preserving implants remains to be established, which will aid in defining more refined treatment concepts for both fusion and motion preserving techniques alike.
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As research tools, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status classification system, the modified Charlson Comorbidity Index (mCCI), and the modified Frailty Index (mFI) have been associated with complications following spine procedures. However, with respect to clinical use for various adverse outcomes, no known study has compared the predictive performance of these indices specifically following posterior lumbar fusion (PLF). ⋯ For PLF, easily obtained patient ASA and age have overall similar or better discriminative abilities for perioperative adverse outcomes than numerically tabulated indices that have multiple inputs and are harder to implement in clinical practice.
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Prolonged microgravity exposure is associated with localized low back pain and an elevated risk of post-flight disc herniation. Although the mechanisms by which microgravity impairs the spine are unclear, they should be foundational for developing in-flight countermeasures for maintaining astronaut spine health. Because human spine anatomy has adapted to upright posture on Earth, observations of how spaceflight affects the spine should also provide new and potentially important information on spine biomechanics that benefit the general population. ⋯ We observed that multifidus atrophy, rather than intervertebral disc swelling, associated strongly with lumbar flattening and increased stiffness. Because these changes have been previously linked with detrimental spine biomechanics and pain in terrestrial populations, when combined with evidence of pre-flight vertebral end plate insufficiency, they may elevate injury risk for astronauts upon return to gravity loading. Our results also have implications for deconditioned spines on Earth. We anticipate that our results will inform new astronaut countermeasures that target the multifidus muscles, and research on the role of muscular stability in relation to chronic low back pain and disc injury.
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Emergent surgery for patients with a traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) is seen as the gold standard in acute management. However, optimal treatment for those with the clinical diagnosis of central cord syndrome (CCS) is less clear, and classic definitions of CCS do not identify a unique population of patients. ⋯ We propose that classification of stable cervical SCI is more clinically relevant than classic CCS classification as this group was found to be unique with regard to demographics, neurologic injury, management, and outcome, whereas classic CCS classifications do not . This classification can be used to assess optimal management in patients where it is less clear if and when surgery should be performed.