The Michel Benoist and Robert Mulholland yearly European Spine Journal Review

摘要

Introduction Open image in new window In the 2017 volume of the European Spine Journal there are fewer so-called a??medicala?? papers, contrasting with the abundance of a??surgicala?? papers and those devoted to deformities. Among the numerous interesting publications, I have found some, which I believe will add to our knowledge in various sectors and I have also included a few a??surgicala?? papers, as they bring important information to non-surgical specialists. The care of patients with spinal diseases often calls for a multi-disciplinary approach. All these studies offer useful additional discussions which, in turn, are factors of progress. For example, the 2017 production contains three good studies dealing with the controversial debate of whether adding fusion to decompression in patients with lumbar spinal stenosis and degenerative spondylolisthesis is followed by better results than using decompression alone. These three articles clearly indicate that many patients can be treated by decompression alone, however, some will benefit from adding a fusion. It is important to consider the health economic aspect (effectiveness), as higher costs are associated with fusion. In this regard, I recommend reading the paper by Ialynytchev et al. in the March issue [1]. It is a casea??control study analyzing factors associated with lumbar fusion, calling for efforts to create guidelines to better understand those patients who are more likely to benefit from lumbar fusion surgery: a difficult task. As discussed in a Norwegian paper analyzed later, collecting data from registries analyzing large numbers of cases appears to be a promising research tool to help the decision-makers find the best effective treatment for each patient.