Prioritized cervical or lumbar surgery for coexisting cervical and lumbar stenosis: Prognostic analysis of 222 case

Background context: Single-stage surgery is usually applied to improving the symptoms of coexisting cervical and lumbar stenosis. In most cases, patients' willingness, surgery affordability, surgical trauma, surgical complications and patients' tolerance to surgery all limit the application of single-stage surgery. For patients who cannot receive single-stage surgery, we hope that we can find out by weighing up merits and flaws of the two surgical sites in order to make decision of prioritize one of the two surgery, so as to bring more benefits to the patients. Objective: To confirm which one of prioritized cervical surgery and prioritized lumbar surgery has a better effect in alleviating the symptoms of patients with coexisting cervical and lumbar stenosis. Study design: A retrospective analysis and a cohort study for 15 years. Patient sample: The information of 222 patients who were diagnosed with coexisting cervical and lumbar stenosis over the past 15 years was collected, including 144 patients who underwent prioritized cervical surgery and 78 prioritized lumbar surgery, thereafter the changes in the patients' postoperative neurological functions were evaluated. Outcome measures: Primary outcome variables are the clinical diagnosis event and the event of surgical site positioning. Secondary variables are the event of postoperative function changes and the symptom improvement event. Methods: The information about 222 patients with coexisting cervical and lumbar stenosis who had a follow-up of more than 1 year during January 2000 and December 2014 was collected. The effects of prioritized staged cervical and lumbar surgeries on the prognosis for the above-mentioned patients were respectively evaluated via relevant evaluation indexes. Results: The follow-up time was 18-156 months (58.0 +/- 36.5). The lumbar reoperation rate after prioritized cervical surgery was lower than the cervical reoperation rate after prioritized lumbar surgery (22.91% < 57.69%) (P < 0.01). The JOA score and Nurick grade significantly improved (P < 0.01) and the ODI score improved (P < 0.05) after prioritized cervical surgery. No obvious improvement in the JOA score and Nurick grade (P > 0.05) was shown but the ODI score markedly improved (P < 0.01) after prioritized lumbar surgery. Conclusions: For patients with coexisting cervical and lumbar stenosis, prioritized cervical surgery is safe and effective and is superior to prioritized lumbar surgery on the improvement of cervical and lumbar symptoms, the postoperative recovery of limb function and the rate of reoperation on another site. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of IJS Publishing Group Ltd.