An article published in Clinical Spine Surgery examines the perioperative complications associated with spinal metastases surgery.
Here are six key trends:
1. Improvements in treatment and longer patient survival times have increased the incidences of symptomatic spinal metastasis over the years. Additionally, more patients are choosing operative treatment that is associated with increased perioperative complication rates.
2. The complication rates associated with overall operative metastatic disease reported an increase ranging from 5.3 percent to 76.2 percent.
3. The common surgical-related complications include iatrogenic dural injury and wound complications; the most common postoperative medical complications are:
• Delirium
• Pneumonia
• Deep vein thrombosis
4. Patients who are older, undergoing multilevel procedures, have preoperative irradiation, lower preoperative Karnofsky Performance Scores and patients with multiple comorbidities are more likely to have perioperative complications.
5. The spinal metastasis surgery reoperation rate is 10.7 percent and the second surgery is often performed in the same admission as the primary procedure.
6. Thirty-day mortality rates for spinal metastasis patients is around 7 percent and the factors associated with 30-day mortality include the type of cancer, disease burden and patient comorbidities.