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65th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC)

German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC)

11 - 14 May 2014, Dresden

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Decompression surgery for lumbar spinal canal stenosis in octogenarians – a swiss single center experience of 121 consecutive cases

Meeting Abstract

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  • Nils H. Ulrich - Department of Orthopedics, University Hospital Balgrist, University of Zurich, Switzerland
  • Alexander Antoniadis - Department of Orthopedics, University Hospital Balgrist, University of Zurich, Switzerland
  • Christoph M. Woernle - Department of Orthopedics, University Hospital Balgrist, University of Zurich, Switzerland
  • Samuel Schmid - Department of Orthopedics, University Hospital Balgrist, University of Zurich, Switzerland
  • Gianmarco Colombo - Department of Orthopedics, University Hospital Balgrist, University of Zurich, Switzerland
  • Kan Min - Department of Orthopedics, University Hospital Balgrist, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie. 65. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie (DGNC). Dresden, 11.-14.05.2014. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2014. DocP 144

doi: 10.3205/14dgnc539, urn:nbn:de:0183-14dgnc5399

Published: May 13, 2014

© 2014 Ulrich et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

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Objective: Degenerative lumbar spinal stenosis (DLSS) causes functional disability with back and lower extremity pain at older ages. With increasing age, ubiquitous degeneration processes lead to a narrowing of the spinal canal. Goal of this study was to determine whether in our octogenarians patient population with DLSS might improve in quality of life after decompression surgery.

Method: In this retrospective study, we examined files of 121 patients with the age >80 years, that underwent posterior decompression surgery for DLSS from January 2006 to June 2013. Patients were evaluated for outcome of surgery with Zurich Claudication questionnaire (ZCQ), walking distance were compared pre- and postoperatively. And further the visual analogue scale (VAS) was determined before and after surgery and in the follow-up process.

Results: Our preliminary results show overall improvement in all ZCQ-subgroups (symptom severity, physical function domain, overall function degree). The pre- and post-operative VAS-comparison showed a mean improvement by 3.5 points.

Conclusions: Our study suggests that posterior decompression is a beneficial treatment procedure and seems to improve quality of life even in patients over 80 years of age. To date, this is the largest European single-center octogenarian patient population with DLSS that were evaluated for decompression surgery.