Neurological function following early versus delayed decompression surgery for drop foot caused by lumbar degenerative diseases

Publication date: Available online 23 January 2020Source: Journal of Clinical NeuroscienceAuthor(s): Hiroaki Nakashima, Yoshimoto Ishikawa, Tokumi Kanemura, Fumihiko Kato, Kotaro Satake, Keigo Ito, Kenyu Ito, Kei Ando, Kazuyoshi Kobayashi, Naoki Ishiguro, Shiro ImagamaAbstractThe purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of early (<72 h) versus late (≥72 h) decompression surgery after the onset of drop foot caused by root disorder in lumbar degenerative diseases (LDDs). Data were included from 60 patients who underwent decompression surgery for drop foot caused by LDDs, including lumbar disk herniation or lumbar spinal stenosis. The primary outcome was ordinal change in the manual muscle test (MMT) at 2 years follow-up. Secondary outcomes included changes in the Japanese Orthopedic Association’s (JOA) score. The early- and late-stage surgery groups included 20 and 40 patients with mean durations from the onset of drop foot to operation of 0.8 days (range, 0–3 days) and 117.1 days (range, 10–891 days), respectively. There was no significant difference (p = 0.33) between the early- and late-stage surgery groups in the improvement of MMT scores to>4 (90% versus 80%, respectively). However, more patients in the early-stage group achieved an MMT score>5 compared with those in the late-stage surgery group (80% versus 45%; p = 0.03). Furthermore, the recovery rate of JOA scores was significantly higher in the early-stage (89.1%) compared with ...
Source: Journal of Clinical Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research