On the Diagnosis and Treatment of Lumbar Spinal Stenosis

Abstract: Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is the most common indication for spinal surgery. The aging global population is increasing the demand for strategies that promote physical activity among the elderly. As the prevalence of LSS rises, the condition gains constantly demographic and socioeconomic attention. Until recently, there has been no clear consensus regarding LSS treatment. Further, using electrodiagnostic examinations (EDX) as predictive tools to identify surgical candidates, could lead to a more tailored medical approach. Methodological issues in previous studies have left some questions unanswered. The necessity of extensive surgery for LSS remains a topic of debate among spinal surgeons, which this work addressed by analyzing data from 723 patients. Parts of the work aimed to compare surgery and structured non-surgical treatment for LSS (Paper I, II, III). Furthermore, it aimed to investigate, by means of EDX, whether the degree of neurological affection correlates to the surgical outcome of LSS (Paper I, II). Additionally, this work evaluated the radiological outcome for surgical vs non-surgical treatment for LSS in terms of sagittal balance parameters (Paper III, V). Finally, parts of this thesis aimed to confirm findings from previous studies regarding DA and DF for LSS with DS (Paper IV, V). The current thesis is based on two randomized controlled trials and a cohort study: the Uppsala Spinal Stenosis Trial, the Swedish Spinal Stenosis Study, and the Cohort Study on LSS with DS. Patient reported outcome measures from the Swedish National Quality Registry for Spine Surgery (Swespine) were used to collect follow-up data. We concluded that at six months, surgery with decompression leads to superior clinical outcome, compared to structured physical therapy. The improvement is not affected by delay of surgery (Paper II). EDX does not add predictive value when assessing the patients for eligibility before surgery (Paper II). DA improves the spinal sagittal balance, regardless of preoperative DS (Paper III) and provides good two-year clinical outcome in LSS with DS with low rate of complications, and low need for subsequent surgery (Paper IV). New radiological stenosis was less common two years after DA than after DF, in LSS with or without preoperative DS (Paper V).