Surgery versus Conservative Care for Persistent Sciatica Lasting 4 to 12 Months
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The treatment of chronic sciatica caused by herniation of a lumbar disk has not been well studied in comparison with acute disk herniation. Data are needed on whether diskectomy or a conservative approach is better for sciatica that has persisted for several months. METHODS: In a single-center trial, we randomly assigned patients with sciatica that had lasted for 4 to 12 months and lumbar disk herniation at the L4-L5 or L5-S1 level in a 1:1 ratio to undergo microdiskectomy or to receive 6 months of standardized nonoperative care followed by surgery if needed. Surgery was performed by spine surgeons who used conventional microdiskectomy techniques. The primary outcome was the intensity of leg pain on a visual analogue scale (ranging from 0 to 10, with higher scores indicating more severe pain) at 6 months after enrollment. Secondary outcomes were the score on the Oswestry Disability Index, back and leg pain, and quality-of-life scores at 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year. RESULTS: From 2010 through 2016, a total of 790 patients were screened; of those patients, 128 were enrolled, with 64 in each group. Among the patients assigned to undergo surgery, the median time from randomization to surgery was 3.1 weeks; of the 64 patients in the nonsurgical group, 22 (34%) crossed over to undergo surgery at a median of 11 months after enrollment. At baseline, the mean score for leg-pain intensity was 7.7 in the surgical group and 8.0 in the nonsurgical group. The primary outcome of the leg-pain intensity score at 6 months was 2.8 in the surgical group and 5.2 in the nonsurgical group (adjusted mean difference, 2.4; 95% confidence interval, 1.4 to 3.4; P<0.001). Secondary outcomes including the score on the Owestry Disability Index and pain at 12 months were in the same direction as the primary outcome. Nine patients had adverse events associated with surgery, and one patient underwent repeat surgery for recurrent disk herniation. CONCLUSIONS: In this single-center trial involving patients with sciatica lasting more than 4 months and caused by lumbar disk herniation, microdiskectomy was superior to nonsurgical care with respect to pain intensity at 6 months of follow-up. (Funded by Physicians' Services Incorporated Foundation; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01335646.).
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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 | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 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".