A study presented at the Society of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery Global Forum in 2014 compared minimally invasive and open lumbar laminectomy.
The study authors retrospectively reviewed 119 patients who underwent primary one- and two-level lumbar laminectomy for degenerative spinal surgery patients. The patients underwent surgery from 2005 to 2013 and all surgeries were done by a single surgeon.
The researchers found:
1. The patients who underwent minimally invasive surgery had similar average procedure times to the open surgery patients: the MIS surgery time was 54.9 minutes on average, compared with 62.9 minutes for the open procedures.
2. There was less intraoperative blood loss in the MIS group than the open group.
3. Both groups reported similar hospitalization rates.
4. The MIS group and the open group reported similar rates for postoperative complications.
5. The postoperative VAS score improvement was similar between both groups.
"The retrospective, single surgeon series suggests that MIS techniques are an efficacious alternative to traditional open approaches and that both techniques enjoy successful patient outcome," the study authors concluded.