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Comparison of the clinical outcomes of VBE-TLIF versus MIS-TLIF for single-level degenerative lumbar diseases

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Abstract

Objective

This research aims to compare the clinical outcomes of VBE-TLIF and MIS-TLIF for the treatment of patients with single-level degenerative lumbar diseases.

Methods

Ninety patients were enrolled in this study. The estimated blood loss, operation time, postoperative hospitalization days, time to functional exercise, amount of surgical drain and inflammatory index were recorded. The visual analog scale, Oswestry dysfunction index and modified MacNab criteria were used to assessed the patient’s back and leg pain, functional status and clinical satisfaction rates.

Results

The average operation time of the VBE-TLIF group was longer than that of the MIS-TLIF group. The time for functional exercise, length of hospital stay, estimated blood loss and amount of surgical drain in the VBE-TLIF group were relative shorter than those in the MIS-TLIF group. Additionally, the levels of CRP, neutrophil, IL-6 and CPK in the VBE-TLIF group were significantly lower than those in the MIS-TLIF group at postoperative days 1 and 3, respectively (P < 0.001). Patients undergoing VBE-TLIF had significantly lower back VAS scores than those in the MIS-TLIF group on postoperative days 1 and 3 (P < 0.001). No significant differences were found in the clinical satisfaction rates (95.83 vs. 95.24%, P = 0.458) or interbody fusion rate (97.92 vs. 95.24%, P = 0.730) between these two surgical procedures.

Conclusions

Both VBE-TLIF and MIS-TLIF are safe and effective surgical procedures for patients with lumbar diseases, but VBE-TLIF technique is a preferred surgical procedure with merits of reduced surgical trauma and quicker recovery.

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Code availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

Funding

This work was supported by the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (Grant Number: 22S31900100) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 82001927).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Xinbo Wu, Wei Liu and Xiao Xiao have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Orthopaedics, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Yanchang Road 301, Shanghai, 200072, People’s Republic of China

    Xinbo Wu, Wei Liu, Xiao Xiao, Yunshan Fan, Guangfei Gu, Shunzhi Yu, Huang Yan, Yingchuan Zhao, Haijian Ni & Shisheng He

  2. Department of Nursing, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Yanchang Road 301, Shanghai, 200072, People’s Republic of China

    Xiang Wang

  3. Department of Radiological, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Yanchang Road 301, Shanghai, 200072, People’s Republic of China

    Xifan Li

Authors
  1. Xinbo Wu
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Contributions

XW, WL and XX performed project administration and writing—original draft. YF, GG and SY performed data curation; HY and XW collected the intraoperative operation pictures; XL collected the preoperative and postoperative imaging pictures. YZ performed writing—review and editing. HN and SH contributed to conceptualization and supervision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shisheng He.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the Institutional Ethical Committee of local hospital.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Wu, X., Liu, W., Xiao, X. et al. Comparison of the clinical outcomes of VBE-TLIF versus MIS-TLIF for single-level degenerative lumbar diseases. Eur Spine J 33, 1120–1128 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-023-08096-3

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