Comparative study on the treatment of disc herniations

Abstract

Objective: To compare the results of treatment of patients with low back pain and radiculalgia resulting from disc herniation associated with disc degeneration through instrumentation with pedicle screws and dynamic rod, with root release and without diskectomy compared with other non-instrumented techniques (microdiskectomy with or without foraminotomy). Methods: This is a retrospective descriptive study of interventions for patients with herniated discs in the Traumatology and Neurosurgery that used the following variables: age, sex, type of technique, surgical time, time of evolution, degree of satisfaction, and complications. Two groups were formed: instrumentation with dynamic rods and non-instrumented techniques, comparing the results of each group. The software used was the SPSS v20.0. Results: We presented 142 interventions carried out between 2009 and 2012, 86 with dynamic instrumentation and 56 by other decompression techniques without instrumentation. No statistically significant differences were observed between age and sex groups and time elapsed until intervention. We found statistically significant differences (p=0.001) in surgical time, which was lower in the instrumented technique. No significant differences were found in complications between the techniques in both re-operations and in infections. Conclusions: In this study, we found no significant differences between the use of instrumentation with dynamic rods with respect to other non-instrumented surgical techniques in the treatment of herniated discs over 6 months of evolution or the complications and the degree of the patients' satisfaction.