Michael Vitale, MD, Ronald Leeman Jr., MD, and Lawrence Lenke, MD, of New York City-based New York-Presbyterian Columbia Orthopedics, developed best practice guidelines for wrong level spinal deformity surgery.
The guidelines are published in the Journal of Spine Deformity.
Here are five takeaways:
1. The best practice guidelines were developed on the consensus of 16 fellowship training spine surgeons. Consensus was an 80 percent agreement or higher.
2. Participants in the study had an average of 13.4 years of experience and performed 103.1 spinal deformity surgeries annually.
3. The guidelines consist of 17 interventions to avert wrong-level surgery. A final checklist consisting of preoperative and intraoperative methods is also included.
4. The checklist, which includes standardized vertebral-level counting and optimal imaging criteria, was supported by all study participants.
5. Authors concluded, "We developed consensus-based best practice guidelines for the prevention of wrong-vertebral-level surgery. This can serve as a tool to reduce the variability in preoperative and intraoperative practices and guide research regarding the effectiveness of such interventions on the incidence of
wrong-level surgery."