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What Is It?: An April 11th article from the Mayo Clinic highlights a 2022 post from Global Spine Journal. The results found that a need to delay elective multilevel fusion for adult spinal deformity (ASD) leads to poorer patient outcomes.
The Data:
- According to the article, patients who experienced a delay in spine surgery had a 7x higher mortality rate (3.5% vs 0.5%) than those who did not.
- “In this study, the investigators performed an American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Project (ACS-NSQIP) database retrospective review of 10,071 patients undergoing elective, greater-than-seven-level ASD spinal instrumentation between 2005 and 2015.”
- Patients who had a delay saw increases in postoperative complications (44.4%) compared to those who did not (19.1%).
Why Delay Care?: Arjun S. Sebastian, M.D. describes that patients with “severe systematic disease” may delay rehabilitating any modifiable risk factors. Other independent risk factors, such as smoking, increase risk and may necessitate a delay.
The Results: Results show that patients who delay spine surgery care or experience a delay due to increased risk factors are at a substantially higher risk of post-op complications and potential mortality. Therefore, patients needing this procedure should actively reduce their risk factors and seek care to ensure a positive patient outcome.
Resources:
Sage Journals: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2192568220954395#bibr9-2192568220954395
