Complications associated with lumbar discectomy surgical techniques: a systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Open discectomy (OD) and microdiscectomy (MD) are routine procedures for the treatment of lumbar disc herniation. Minimally invasive surgery (MIS), such as micro-endoscopic discectomy (MED) and full endoscopic discectomy (FED), offers potential advantages (less pain, less bleeding, shorter hospitalisation and earlier return to work), but their complications have not yet been fully evaluated. The aim of this paper was to identify the frequency of these complications with a focus on MIS in comparison to OD/MD. Methods: The authors conducted a Medline database search for randomised controlled and prospective cohort studies reporting complications associated with MIS and MD/OD from 1997 to February 2020. Included studies were assessed for bias using the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality assessment form. Mean complication rates for each technique were calculated by dividing the total number of each complication by the total number of patients included in the studies which reported that specific complication. Results: Of the 1,095 articles retrieved from Medline, 35 met the inclusion criteria. OD, MD, MED and FED were associated with: recurrent lumbar disc hernias in 4.1%, 5.1%, 3.9% and 3.5% respectively; re-operations in 5.2%, 7.5%, 4.9% and 4% respectively; wound complications in 3.5%, 3.5%, 1.2% and 2% respectively; durotomy in 6.6%, 2.3%, 4.4% and 1.1% respectively; neurological complications in 1.8%, 2.8%, 4.5% and 4.9% respectively. Nerve root injury was reported in 0.3% for MD, 0.8% for MED and 1.2% for FED. Discussion: This up-to-date systematic review of complications after various techniques of lumbar discectomy (including a large pool of patients who had MIS) confirms previous findings of low and comparable rates. However variable levels of bias were reported amongst included studies, which reported complications with varying levels of clinical detail.
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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 | 0.006 | 0.032 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.016 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".