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Long-term outcome of decompressive surgery for Lumbar spinal stenosis in octogenarians

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An Erratum to this article was published on 28 November 2007

Abstract

The purpose of our prospective study is to evaluate the surgical outcome among patients aged 80 years and above, who underwent surgery for lumbar spinal stenosis. We assessed patients’ clinical and demographic data, procedures, perioperative complications, preoperative and postoperative pain intensity, basic activities of daily living (BADL), patients’ satisfaction, the need for repeated surgery, and overall mortality. Thirty-nine patients more than 80 years of age were operated in our institution in the last decade. Twenty-five of them were followed-up with a mean 36.8 months after the operation. The Barthel index was used to evaluate pre and postsurgery ADL, and the visual analogue scale (VAS) was used to evaluate pain. The satisfaction rate of the patients before and after the operation and the complication rate were also evaluated. A significant reduction in VAS (P < 0.001) and a significant increase in the Barthel index (P < 0.001) were recorded. Seventy-six percent of the patients were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the operative results. Fifty-two percent of the patients had complications (0.9 complications per patients), however, about half of them were minor. No operative or perioperative mortality was noticed and the overall hospital stay for these elderly patients was 3.6 days on average. Surgery in very old elderly patients is safe and effective in the treatment of spinal stenosis, who did not respond well to the conservative treatment. The surgery did not increase the associated morbidity and mortality and most of the patients benefited from the surgery in terms of reduction in pain, increase in ADL and walking ability and overall increase in the satisfaction rate.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Spinal Care Unit, Sapir Medical Center, 48 Tchernichovsky Street, Kfar-Saba, 44281, Israel

    Shay Shabat, Zeev Arinzon, Josef Leitner, Rami David, Evgeny Pevzner, Reuven Gepstein & Pekarsky Ilya

  2. Sackler Medical School, Tel Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Shay Shabat, Zeev Arinzon & Reuven Gepstein

  3. Meuhedet Health Care System, Kfar Saba, 42412, Israel

    Zeev Arinzon & Ishay Shuval

  4. Department of Orthopaedics B, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, Hadera, 38100, Israel

    Yoram Folman

  5. Technion Medical School, 32000, Haifa, Israel

    Yoram Folman

Authors
  1. Shay Shabat
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  2. Zeev Arinzon
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  3. Yoram Folman
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  4. Josef Leitner
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  5. Rami David
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  6. Evgeny Pevzner
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  7. Reuven Gepstein
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  8. Pekarsky Ilya
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  9. Ishay Shuval
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zeev Arinzon.

Additional information

An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00586-007-0555-z

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Shabat, S., Arinzon, Z., Folman, Y. et al. Long-term outcome of decompressive surgery for Lumbar spinal stenosis in octogenarians. Eur Spine J 17, 193–198 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-007-0514-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-007-0514-8

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