A Follow-up Study for Long-term Impact of Lumber Spinal Surgery on Patients' Pain, Disability, and Quality Of Life

Objectives: This retro-prospective tried to evaluate patients who had lumbar discectomy through a 3-year duration for surgical outcomes.

Patients & Methods: The retrospective part of the study included the extraction of the data of all patients who had lumbar discectomy between 2020 and 2023. Prospectively, communication was performed with these patients to query about their satisfaction with the surgical outcomes, and complaining patients were asked to attend the clinical evaluation for their pain frequency, severity, and its impacts on their daily life activities using the defined evaluation questionnaires.
Results: Revision of the file registry defined 664 files of patients who had lumbar discectomy. Communications defined 495 patients were satisfied with the surgical outcomes, and 69 patients (11.9%) were still complaining and were asked to attend the re-evaluation, but 6 were missed. Thirty-nine patients had partially alleviated and 19 patients had recurrent pain, while 5 patients had persistent pain with the same severity. Pain and kinesiophobia (TSK-11) scores were positively correlated with female gender and body mass index (BMI). Patients' satisfaction scoring showed a significant negative correlation with age, BMI, pain, and TSK-11 scores. Statistical analyses defined high pain and TSK-11 scores as negative predictors of patient satisfaction and high BMI as a significant predictor for pain severity.
Conclusion: Pain and the ability to move freely are the main determinants of patients’ satisfaction with the surgical outcome. The correlation between pain scores and patients’ demographics, especially BMI indicated the necessity for proper preoperative evaluation of patients for their demographic data.