What are the risks of lumbar spinal stenosis surgery

Any surgery has risks. Before the operation, the doctor will inform the patient or his/her family of the risks. For patients with lumbar spinal stenosis, the risk of surgery is more closely related to age, because most patients with this disease are elderly patients, and their physical resistance is relatively weaker. In addition, some other medical factors of the patient must be considered, which may affect the recovery during and after the operation.

One of the risks of lumbar spinal stenosis surgery

Currently, the main surgical methods for lumbar spinal stenosis are extensive posterior laminectomy, pedicle screw fixation, and bone graft fusion. Generally speaking, the risks of this type of surgery mainly include death, aggravated pain and numbness in the lower limbs after nerve damage during surgery, lower limb weakness, infection, non-healing of surgical incisions, loosening and breakage of internal fixation nails, and non-fusion of bone grafts, but the incidence rates are extremely low and can be basically ignored under current technical conditions. In addition, there is a certain recurrence rate after surgery, but it is also very low.

Risks of Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Surgery 2

Currently, lumbar spinal stenosis surgery is a medium to medium-large operation, with blood loss during and after the operation ranging from several hundred milliliters to two or three thousand milliliters. The trauma and blood loss caused by this operation are not a small problem for ordinary patients. Moreover, there are more and more elderly patients at present, and the concerns of patients and their families about surgical risks are becoming more and more a concern for both doctors and patients.

Risks of Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Surgery

Generally speaking, elderly patients have a decline in the functions of various organ systems throughout the body, a decline in their ability to resist infection, and a decline in their ability to heal wounds. The result is an increased mortality rate after anesthesia and surgery, an increased likelihood of secondary dysfunction of various important organs after surgery, and an increased wound infection rate. However, elderly people who are simply too old but do not have any medical diseases are not absolutely incapable of surgery. There are many precedents of centenarians in China who have successfully undergone surgery. On the contrary, chronic medical diseases of varying degrees, such as diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, cerebral infarction, chronic bronchitis, and renal insufficiency, will greatly increase the risk of anesthesia and increase the surgical mortality rate. Some patients with more serious of the above diseases may not even be able to withstand the risks of anesthesia, surgical trauma, and blood loss. In this sense, patients with the above-mentioned medical diseases have a much greater risk than those who are simply over 80 years old! Now, due to the improvement of anesthesia, intensive care unit and orthopedic surgery technology and level, the overall anesthesia surgery risk and other risks for patients have been greatly reduced compared to before. Many surgeries that were not dared to be performed before have now become routine surgeries. We already have quite a few precedents of elderly patients over 85 years old successfully undergoing more complex cervical and lumbar spine surgeries.

In addition to the above risks, elderly patients also have the problem of osteoporosis, and the possibility of internal fixation loosening and bone graft non-fusion after surgery increases. In recent years, with the improvement of surgical techniques and the application of more advanced internal fixation devices, the above problems have been partially solved.