BACKGROUND CONTEXT Posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) was introduced 50 years ago. The Lumbar I/F cage (DePuy Spine, Raynham, MA) was designed to enhance PLIF results. PLIF with the Lumbar I/F cage and posterior Variable Screw Placement System (VSP) has increased the success of fusion to nearly 100% at the four lowest lumbar levels, L2-L3 through L5-S1. Less commonly, PLIF is indicated fo...

BACKGROUND Following lumbar fusion surgery, a successful outcome is empirically linked to effective rehabilitation. While rehabilitation is typically postoperative, the phase before surgery - termed prehabilitation - is reportedly an ideal time to prepare the patient. There are presently no guidelines for prehabilitation before lumbar fusion surgery. Physical activity has well-known health bene...

background: the routine use of preoperative appropriate paraclinic testing is useful in patients scheduled to undergo elective surgery. the purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of unnecessary preoperative evaluation performed for patients undergoing elective surgeries.methods: this descriptive analytic study was performed to assess the patterns of preoperative evaluation tests on ...

BACKGROUND The diagnosis of discogenic back pain often leads to spinal fusion surgery and may partly explain the recent rapid increase in lumbar fusion operations in the United States. Little is known about how patients undergoing lumbar fusion compare in preoperative physical and psychological function to patients who have degenerative discs, but receive only non-surgical care. METHODS Our g...

BACKGROUND CONTEXT Adjacent segment disease (ASD) after lumbar spinal fusion has been an important reason behind the development of nonfusion stabilization technology. However, the incidence, prevalence, and factors contributing to adjacent segment degeneration in the lumbar spine remain unclear. A range of prevalence rates for ASD have been reported in the lumbar spinal literature, but the ann...

Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is mostly caused by osteoarthritis (spondylosis). Clinically, the symptoms of patients with LSS can be categorized into two groups; regional (low back pain, stiffness, and so on) or radicular (spinal stenosis mainly presenting as neurogenic claudication). Both of these symptoms usually improve with appropriate conservative treatment, but in refractory cases, surgica...

Objective To determine whether the use of autograft associated with platelet-rich plasma (PRP) increases bone healing in patients undergoing lumbar fusion. Method This was a prospective, descriptive, and comparative study, which included 40 patients undergoing lumbar fusion, who were divided into two groups: group I, autograft only, and group II, autograft associated with PRP. After surgery, ...

EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES As a result of reading this article, physicians should be able to: 1. Understand the forces that predispose adjacent cervical segments to degeneration. 2. Understand the challenges of radiographic evaluation in the diagnosis of cervical and lumbar adjacent segment disease. 3. Describe the changes in biomechanical forces applied to adjacent segments of lumbar vertebrae wit...

PURPOSE The objectives of this study are to describe the outcome of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) patients treated with Video Assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery (VATS) plus supplementary minimal incision in the lumbar region for thoracic and lumbar deformity correction and fusion. MATERIALS AND METHODS This is a case series of 13 patients treated with VATS plus lumbar mini-open surgery fo...

Spinal fusion surgery for alleviation of intractable lower back pain in humans is currently a primary therapeutic technique, with failure rates averaging between 5 to 35%. Implanted and external source-based electrical stimulation devices have been investigated in an attempt to increase osteogenesis at the fusion site in an attempt to reduce spinal fusion failure rates. The purpose of our study...