Outcome in Patients Who Underwent Tethered Cord Release for Occult Spinal Dysraphism
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: Tethered cord syndrome encompasses a group of clinical symptoms caused by abnormal spinal cord fixation. We evaluated a select cohort of patients with primary tethered cord syndrome in regard to urodynamic and clinical outcome after cord release. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the records of patients with the diagnosis of tethered cord from May 2001 to October 2004. Patients were assessed preoperatively by standard urodynamic studies, which was repeated a mean of 6.4 months after tethered cord release. Clinical and urodynamic outcomes were analyzed. RESULTS: Ten male and 14 female patients 1 month to 12 years old (median age 6 years) were evaluable. Preoperatively 14 of the 24 patients with a median age of 8.1 years were toilet trained and 7 (50%) had diurnal incontinence. Constipation was noted in 10 of 24 patients (42%) and urinary tract infections developed in 6 (25%). Postoperatively only 1 patient (7%) experienced diurnal incontinence (p = 0.04). Constipation was observed in 6 patients (25%) and urinary tract infections developed in 1 (4.2%) (p = 0.29 and 0.07, respectively). Ten of the 21 children (48%) with abnormal urodynamics had normalized studies postoperatively. Ten of the 17 patients with neurogenic detrusor overactivity achieved normalization and 7 remained unchanged. Two of 3 patients with normal preoperative urodynamics had neurogenic detrusor overactivity and 1 had poor bladder compliance. Four patients with low bladder capacity and/or low compliance preoperatively did not improve. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that tethered cord release is beneficial in terms of clinical and urodynamic outcomes. Patients with abnormal urodynamics had 48% improvement after tethered cord release. Neurogenic detrusor overactivity seems to respond better with 59% improvement in urodynamics. The level of the conus on magnetic resonance imaging did not seem to be predictive of urodynamic outcome. Patients with a normal bladder may show urodynamic deterioration postoperatively, which raises cause for concern.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".