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Spine surgeon specialty not a risk for postoperative complications
A spine surgeon’s specialty has little to no impact on the postoperative complication rates for single-level anterior cervical discectomy and fusions, according to study findings.
Researchers retrospectively identified 1,944 patients who underwent single-level anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) between 2006 and 2012 using the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database. After using propensity score matching to confound any preoperative differences, the researchers compared baseline demographics, comorbidities and complications between patients operated on by a neurological surgeon and those operated on by an orthopedic surgeon using univariate analyses.
Orthopedic surgeons performed 19.9% of the procedures and neurosurgeons performed 80.1% of the procedures.
Comorbidities were higher in the neurosurgeon patient group, but propensity matching revealed that not all preoperative variables varied significantly between the two groups.
Additionally, the odds for overall complications, surgical site complications and medical complications for single-level ACDFs were not statistically significantly for either group based on physician specialty, according to the researchers.
Disclosure: No relevant financial disclosures were reported.