Enhanced Recovery after Lumbar Spine Fusion A Randomized Controlled Trial to Assess the Quality of Patient Recovery

Conclusions Statistically significant gains in early recovery were achieved by an enhanced recovery pathway. However, significant clinical impact was not demonstrated.Editor ’s PerspectiveWhat We Already Know about This TopicRecovery from surgery may be improved by optimizing pre-, intra-, and postoperative management.Enhanced recovery pathways involving spine surgery have scarcely been evaluated.What This Article Tells Us That Is NewUse of an enhanced recovery pathway for patients undergoing one- or two-level lumbar spinal fusion was associated with higher (better) Quality of Recovery-40 scores 3 days after surgery. This difference was not deemed clinically significant, however.Several secondary endpoints including time to oral intake, duration of patient-controlled analgesia use, and day 1 opioid consumption were improved by use of the enhanced recovery pathway.Further refinement of enhanced recovery strategies for spinal surgery is required.
Source: Anesthesiology - Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: research