Journal de colonne vertébrale et de neurochirurgie

Clinical and Radiological Outcomes of Transforaminal Lumbar Interbody Fusion in Low- Grade Spondylolisthesis

Mohamed El-Soufy, Amr M El-Adawy, Sherif Al-Agamy and TarekA ElHewala

Clinical and Radiological Outcomes of Transforaminal Lumbar Interbody Fusion in Low- Grade Spondylolisthesis

Background: Lumbar interbody fusion is a recognized surgical technique in treatment of chronic low back pain in spondylolisthesis. Interbody fusion supplemented with pedicle screw fixation has several advantages over postero-lateral fusion and has been advocated to improve fusion rates and clinical outcomes.

Patients and Methods: We treated thirty six patients with lowgrade spondylolisthesis via TLIF, 9 patients had degenerative spondylolisthesis and 27 patients had lytic spondylolisthesis. The mean age of the patients was 43.5 years (range: 25–60 years) and the sex distribution was 12 males and 24 females. Mechanical low back pain and lower extremity radicular pain were the chief complaints in 33 patients; 24 of them had left sided sciatica and 9 had right sided sciatica. Only 3 patients in the study had mechanical back pain alone.

Results: The mean follow-up period was 22.6 months with a range of 18-26 months. The average operative time was 142.5 minutes. The mean estimated blood loss was 304.1 ml. The average length of stay was 3.75 days. Patients progressively increased their activity levels and resumed full activity at an average of 3.4 months postoperatively. At a minimum of 12 months’ follow-up, all cases appeared to have solid fusions..

Conclusion: TLIF is a safe and effective alternative method to treat chronic low back pain in patients with spondylolisthesis, with good radiographic fusion rates. An effective reduction is possible and could be compared with other methods.