Award-Winning Research

This retrospective review found that endoscopic microdiscectomy and tubular decompression were effective techniques for the treatment of far lateral disc herniations, showing significant improvement in postoperative patient reported outcome measures and no differences in postoperative complications.

Our study demonstrated that erector spinae plane block administered prior to minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion may be associated with earlier return-to-work and discontinuation of opioids, while having limited impact on functional patient-reported outcome measures, minimal clinically important difference achievement rates, and Global Rating of Change scores.

Ambulatory anterior cervical discectomy and fusion patients who filled perioperative opioid prescriptions were prescribed a similar amount of opioids as those undergoing inpatient procedures. Further, ambulatory ACDF does not appear to be a risk factor for persistent opioid use. These findings are important for patient counseling as well as support the safety profile of this new surgical pathway.

The current study suggests that both minimally invasive lumbar decompression and minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion result in significant improvements in pain and physical function for patients with low-grade lumbar degenerative spondylolisthesis.

The current study suggests that telemedicine evaluations can provide an effective means of preoperative assessment for spine patients. Diagnoses and surgical plans rarely change after an in-person follow-up visit. Further, since the main reason for modifications was due to updated imaging, the rate of change is most likely even lower if these imaging studies had been available at the initial telemedicine visit. Finally, there were no differences in the rate of case cancellations before surgery or PROMs between patients who only had a preoperative telemedicine visit versus those with in-person follow-up evaluation.

The perioperative outcomes evaluated in the current study support the conclusion that, for appropriately selected patients, single-level cervical total disc replacement can be safely performed in the outpatient setting without increased rates of 30-day perioperative complications or readmissions compared with inpatient cervical total disc replacement or outpatient single-level anterior cervical discectomy and fusion.