Answer to the letter to the editor of Carl Hans Fürstenberg et al. (2010) concerning manuscript “transforaminal endoscopic surgery for lumbar stenosis: a systematic review” by Jorm Nellensteijn, Raymond Ostelo, Ronald Bartels, Wilco Peul, Barend Van Royen, Maurits Van Tulder. Eur Spine J 19:879–886

摘要

In the letter to the editor it is suggested that we might have missed relevant evidence. Not including ‘discectomy’ in the search strategy is pointed out as the main reason. But apparently there is confusion regarding the fact that we published two systematic reviews, both on transforaminal endoscopic surgery. One focuses on symptomatic lumbar disc herniations [1] and the second one on lumbar stenosis [2]. We combined the search strategy for these two reviews for efficiency reasons. The keywords were used as MESH headings and free text words; discectomy was included in the search strategy [1]. The full search strategy is available upon request.