The spine journal : official journal of the North American Spine Society
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Diabetes is a highly prevalent comorbid condition among patients undergoing spine surgery. Several studies have used legacy patient-reported outcome measures to implicate diabetes as a predictor of increased disability, pain, and decreased physical function and quality of life following spine surgery. The effect of diabetes on postoperative physical function has not yet been studied using the PROMIS Physical Function Computer Adaptive Test (PF CAT). ⋯ Diabetes is associated with lower PF CAT scores up to one year following lumbar spine surgery. However, many of these patients achieve meaningful improvement in physical function during this time. The PF CAT is consistent with legacy outcome measures in assessing outcomes in diabetic patients undergoing lumbar spine surgery, with an added benefit of decreased patient burden.
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Comparative Study
Comparing different chronic preoperative opioid use definitions on outcomes after spine surgery.
No consensus exists for defining chronic preoperative opioid use. Most spine studies rely solely on opioid duration to stratify patients into preoperative risk categories. ⋯ The Edlund definition is recommended for identifying patients at highest risk for postoperative opioid use. When opioid dosage is unavailable, the Schoenfeld definition is a reasonable choice with similar predictive ability. For patient-reported outcomes, either the Edlund or Schoenfeld definition is recommended. Future work should consider combing dosage and duration, with 3 and 6 month cutoffs, into chronic opioid use definitions.
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Surgical decompression is usually offered for improvement of neurogenic claudication in patients with symptomatic lumbar canal stenosis. These patients often have associated low back pain (LBP) and little is known about the effect of decompression on this symptom. ⋯ Alleviation of clinically significant LBP was observed at 3 months after lumbar decompression surgery for neurogenic claudication and was maintained at 12 and 24 months after surgery in the majority of patients.
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There is considerable variability in patient-reported outcome measures following surgery for lumbar disc herniation. Individualized prediction tools that are derived from center- or even surgeon-specific data could provide valuable insights for shared decision-making. ⋯ Our study demonstrates that generating personalized and robust deep learning-based analytics for outcome prediction is feasible even with limited amounts of center-specific data. With prospective validation, the ability to preoperatively and reliably inform patients about the likelihood of symptom improvement could prove useful in patient counselling and shared decision-making.
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Postoperative vertebral osteomyelitis (PVO) after spinal surgery is a clinical challenge. However, there is a paucity of evidence regarding the most likely etiologic organisms to guide the choice of empirical antibiotic therapy, and previous reports of treatment outcomes for PVO are scarce. ⋯ Coverage of methicillin-resistant staphylococci should be considered when prescribing empirical antibiotics for PVO. Although surgery was performed more often in PVO than NVO, the treatment failure and relapse rates at 12 months were higher in PVO.