Healio
Healio
May 19, 2009
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Less-invasive spine surgery considered safe for elderly patients

MIAMI — The benefits of spine surgery for older patients, including less-invasive operations, seem to outweigh the risks associated with those procedures, according to a European research team.

Spine surgeons affiliated with the Spine Tango spine registry prospectively assessed data from the registry in October 2008 (n = 11,954 patients) as well as the data from their own retrospective study (n = 284 patients) and from a meta-analysis of the literature and performed a detailed complication and function analysis in comparison to patients’ age.

“We wanted to see if there was, in fact, a correlation between the rate of complications in spine surgery and patients’ age,” Rolf Sobottke, MD, of the University of Cologne, Germany, said at the 36th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine, here.

In the study, the investigators divided patients into four groups: those aged 45 years and younger, those aged 46 to 65 years, patients aged 66 to 78.7 years, and those aged older than 78.7 years. The researchers used Statistical Analysis Software (SAS 9.1.3) to perform the analysis.

“When we compared the meta-analysis of the literature, the results of the European Spine Tango register and our own study, we determined that there was not much of a difference in the complication rate for less-invasive spine surgery between older and younger patients,” he said.

Still, there was a greater correlation between age and complication rate as the complexity of the procedure increased, and each year a patient got older, the risk of a surgical complication appeared to increase 1.02, he said.

Sobottke said there were no differences in the rate of complications at follow-up between the age groups, and instrumentation did not lead to a higher complication rate in older patients compared to younger patients.

“We noticed that the older two patient groups received measurable benefits from their surgery independent of the extent or complexity of the surgery,” he added.

“Since chronic pain leads to physical restrictions and deterioration of quality of life in the elderly, and since we know that adequate operative therapy can significantly improve these vital factors, we should keep in mind the risks of spine surgery. However, patients’ age should not be considered a contraindication for spinal surgery,” Sobottke noted.

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