For a multi-center, retrospective study, researchers wanted to determine the clinical and radiological consequences of eliminating interspinous contextures in individuals with lumbar spinal stenosis undergoing lumbar decompression surgery. There have been researches that compared the clinical outcomes and radiographic alterations of various minimally invasive decompression techniques. In a series of 52 patients, lumbar spinous process-splitting laminectomy (LSPSL) was performed, followed by trans-interspinous lumbar decompression (TISLD) in 50 individuals. All of the patients had cauda equina lumbar spinal stenosis and were followed for at least 1 year. The extent of daily living activities was determined using the Japanese Orthopaedic Association (JOA) score and the Japanese Orthopaedic Association Back Pain Evaluation Questionnaire (JOABPEQ) score. The patient’s
age and preoperative JOA scores were matched between the 2 groups using a propensity score (PS)-matching analysis. By using a functional lumbar lateral x-ray, the researchers examined lumbar lordosis (LL), disc height (DH), segmental range of motion (ROM), and anterior vertebral translation and compared preoperative and 1-year postoperative data. PS-matching was used to choose twenty-nine pairings of patients. At preoperative and 1-year follow-up, mean JOA scores in the LSPSL group climbed from 14.4 to 23.5 (mean recovery rate of 62.3%) and in the TISLD group from 14.0 to 23.2 (61.3%). In each group, there were no significant differences in clinical outcomes or changes in LL, ROM, or anterior vertebral translation. The TISLD group had a substantial decrease in DH at the L4 out of 5 level 1 year following surgery compared to the LSPSL group. In the LSPSL group, there was a link between preoperative DH and DH decline, but not in the TISLD group. The removal of interspinous contextures did not affect clinical results 1 year following surgery, but it was found to be more likely to produce disc height reduction at the L4 out of 5 levels.
