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Lumbar facet joint osteoarthritis as the underlying reason for persistent low back pain after minimally invasive discectomy

  • Orthopaedic Surgery
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Abstract

Introduction

A post-hoc subgroup analysis of prospective collected data in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of minimally invasive discectomy was conducted, to find out the possible underlying reasons for patients with persistent low back pain (LBP) following surgery.

Materials and methods

Patients who were diagnosed with lumbar disc herniation (LDH) and underwent either percutaneous transforaminal endoscopic discectomy or microendoscopic discectomy in our RCT were analyzed. Patients with persistent LBP in 2-year follow-up were compared with the non-LBP patients to determine the underlying reasons. Then, the demographic characteristics, clinical outcomes and radiological parameters of patients with preoperative lumbar facet joint osteoarthritis (LFJOA) were assessed and compared with the non-LFJOA subgroup.

Results

18 patients (8.1%) were reported to have persistent LBP in 2-year follow-up. Significantly higher proportion of preoperative LFJOA were found in the persistent LBP subgroup and was considered to be a risk factor using multivariate analysis. The prevalence of LFJOA is strongly associated with older age, female, high BMI and heavy labor in the LDH population. All of the clinical outcomes including ODI, SF36-PF, SF36-BP, EQ-5D, VAS-back and VAS-leg were worse in LFJOA subgroup in 2-year follow-up. LFJOA subgroup was associated with more adjacent segment degeneration and more lateral recess stenosis.

Conclusions

LFJOA is a possible underlying reason for patients with persistent LBP after minimally invasive discectomy. Surgeons should carefully review the preoperative radiological images to find out whether there is LFJOA in the LDH segment, and kindly diminish the expectation of back pain relief for those patients.

Trial registration: This trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov at November 14, 2013, registration number NCT01997086. (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01997086).

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Acknowledgements

None.

Funding

This study is supported by “Sun Yat-Sen University Clinical Research 5010 Program” (trial number: 2013006).

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Author notes

  1. Zihao Chen and Lei He have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Spine Surgery, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, No. 600 Tianhe Road, Guangzhou, 510630, China

    Zihao Chen, Lei He, Jiawei Di, Lijun Huang, Feng Feng, Bu Yang, Peigen Xie & Limin Rong

  2. Guangdong Provincial Center for Quality Control of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery, Guangzhou, China

    Zihao Chen, Lei He, Jiawei Di, Lijun Huang, Feng Feng, Bu Yang, Peigen Xie & Limin Rong

  3. Guangdong Provincial Center for Engineering and Technology Research of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery, Guangzhou, China

    Zihao Chen, Lei He, Jiawei Di, Lijun Huang, Feng Feng, Bu Yang, Peigen Xie & Limin Rong

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  1. Zihao Chen
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Correspondence to Peigen Xie or Limin Rong.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee at The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Chen, Z., He, L., Di, J. et al. Lumbar facet joint osteoarthritis as the underlying reason for persistent low back pain after minimally invasive discectomy. Arch Orthop Trauma Surg 143, 3811–3821 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00402-022-04595-y

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