STUDY DESIGN Systematic review. STUDY RATIONALE The surgical treatment of adult degenerative lumbar conditions remains controversial. Conventional techniques include posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) or transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF). A new direct approach known as lumbar lateral interbody fusion (LLIF), or extreme lateral interbody fusion (XLIF(®)) or direct lateral int...

STUDY DESIGN Eighty-four patients who had been treated for degenerative spinal diseases between January 2006 and June 2009 were reviewed retrospectively. PURPOSE We aimed to compare the clinical and radiologic findings of manual workers who underwent posterolateral fusion (PLF) or posterior interbody fusion (PLIF) involving fusion of 3 or more levels of the spine. OVERVIEW OF LITERATURE Pre...

Immune tolerance mechanisms supporting normal human pregnancy are exploited by breast cancer and other malignancies. We cloned from human placenta and breast cancer cells the novel human immunomodulator named placenta immunosuppressive ferritin (PLIF). PLIF is composed of a ferritin heavy chain-like domain and a novel cytokine-like domain, named C48. Both intact PLIF and C48 inhibit T cell prol...

Background The number of lumbar spine surgeries has been increasing during the last 20 years, which also leads to an increase in hospital costs and complications related to surgery. Therefore, there is a greater concern about the costs and safety of the techniques and implants used. Methods Patients (aged from 18 to 50 years) presenting with lumbago /sciatica (ICD-10-CM M54.3, M54.4) due to l...

Objective To compare the medium-term clinical and radiographic outcomes of Dynesys dynamic stabilization and posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) for treatment of multisegmental lumbar degenerative disease. Methods Fifty-seven patients with multisegmental lumbar degenerative disease underwent Dynesys stabilization (n = 26) or PLIF (n = 31) from December 2008 to February 2010. The mean follo...

background & aim: the purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the pain of patients with spondylolisthesis who had undergone either of the surgery techniques: posterolateral fusion (plf) or posterior lumbar interbody fusion (plif). methods & materials/patients: in a prospective observational study, 102 surgical candidates with low grade degenerative and isthmic spondylolisthesis were e...

The application of nonlinear anisotropic diffusion filtering to reduce noise and enhance contours in images obtained by two-dimensional planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) spectroscopy is presented. In this process the diffusion coefficient is locally adapted, becoming negligible as object boundaries are approached. Noise is efficiently removed, and object contours are strongly enhanced. T...

Organic dyes commonly used for planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) are susceptible to photobleaching under laser excitation. Previous work has shown that photobleaching can induce significant errors in laser-induced fluorescence measurements made with single-point techniques. This paper presents an analytical model and experimental results that quantify the extent of photobleaching in the ...

OBJECT Posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) was developed to overcome the limitations of posterolateral fusion in correcting spinal deformity and maintaining lumbar lordosis. In this study the authors compare the biomechanical effects of three different posterior reconstructions on the adjacent motion segment. METHODS Ten calf spinal (L2-S1) specimens underwent nondestructive flexion-exte...

BACKGROUND The benefits of extreme lateral interbody fusion (XLIF) as a minimally invasive lumbar spinal fusion treatment for lumbar degenerative spondylolisthesis have been unclear. We sought to evaluate the invasiveness and tolerability of XLIF with percutaneous pedicle screws (PPS) compared with traditional open posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF). METHODS Fifty-six consecutive patien...