What effect does one…or two…or three or more(!) adult spinal deformity surgeries have on revision surgery outcomes?
Probably not good, right?
The results of new study which looked at 137 revision adult spinal deformity surgeries may surprise you.
Isador H. Lieberman, M.D., M.B.A. and Xiaobang Hu, M.D., Ph.D. of the Texas Back Institute,Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Plano set out to answer that question.
Their work, “Revision adult spinal deformity surgery: Does the number of previous operations have a negative impact on outcome?” was published in the October 31, 2018 edition of the European Spine Journal.
Dr. Lieberman told OTW, “The number of revision spine surgeries being performed across the country is increasing dramatically. More than 60% of my practice today is revision spine surgery. There has traditionally been much anxiety over subjecting patients to further surgery due to the underlying fear that they would not improve or may be even worse.”
The authors wrote, “One hundred and thirty-seven consecutive patients who underwent revision adult spinal deformity surgery were classified as follows:
- those who had one previous operation (group 1),
- had two previous operations (group two)
- or had three or more previous operations (group 3).
Lieberman and Hu documented perioperative complications, additional surgeries, back pain, leg pain, ODI [Oswestry Disability Index]scores and radiographic measurements.”
“Despite the fact that many patients had two or three prior procedures they still improved after a revision when the problem was defined, and the surgery was symptom specific,” said Dr. Lieberman to OTW.
“Those patients who require a revision spine surgery are more likely to require even further revision, however the improvement in symptoms is consistent between those who undergo 1, 2 or 3 revisions.”
“Despite the initial severity of symptoms after a revision many can still anticipate improvement of their function at long term follow up.”
