Greater Than 6-month Follow-up Pain Management Doctor Experience With Interspinous Lumbar Fusion​

Authors: Michael Espostio MD, Tian Xia MD, Michael D. Danko MD, Faris Abusharif MD, Abdul Shahid MD, Fabio Pencle MBBS, Jason A. Seale MBBS,  Kingsley R. Chin MD   

Introduction:

Michael Esposito MD

Innovations in minimally invasive spine surgery have provided pain management doctors with the technologies to treat chronic lower back pain with interspinous lumbar fusion procedures. The authors aim to study the ability of pain management doctors to perform an interspinous lumbar fusion looking at patients' outcomes. We secondarily want to evaluate the physicians' learning curve.

Methods:

A prospective, multicenter clinical study with randomly selected doctors. The study period was December 2019 to December 2020 and patients followed up to July2021All pain management doctors were trained by a board-certified orthopedic spine surgeon at a cadaver lab. All pain management doctors were proctored by a board-certified orthopedic spine surgeon for the first case. All pain management doctors had completed fellowship training and were board certified.

Results

  • No complication

  • No spinous process fracture

  • No device failure

  • No revisions

  • Implant range 12-16 mm

  • Average blood loss less than 25 cc

  • 100% of patients had improvement in VAS and Oswestry

Conclusion:

This study demonstrates that pain management doctors can perform an interspinous lumbar fusion procedure. Strict protocol for training and proctoring by a board-certified orthopedic surgeon is recommended.

Limitation: This study did not address the effectiveness of pain management doctors who were not trained by a board-certified orthopedic surgeon.

References:

  1. Hartman J, Granville M, Jacobson RE. The Use of Vertiflex® Interspinous SpacerDevice in Patients With Lumbar Spinal Stenosis and Concurrent Medical Comorbidities.Cureus. 2019 Aug 12;11(8):e5374. doi: 10.7759/cureus.5374. PMID: 31616607; PMCID:PMC6786837.

  2. Chin KR, Pencle FJR, Benny A, Seale JA. Greater than 5-year follow-up of outpatient L4-L5 lumbar interspinous fixation for degenerative spinal stenosis using the INSPANdevice. J Spine Surg. 2020 Sep;6(3):549-554. doi: 10.21037/jss-20-547. PMID:33102891; PMCID: PMC7548832.

 
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