Aging of the Cervical Spine in Healthy Volunteers A 10-Year Longitudinal Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study
Prospective longitudinal study. Mean follow-up. It is 11.7 + .8 years 223 subjects of original 497 asymtomatic volunteers from asymptomatic volunteers from 1993 to 1996 returned for a repeat MRI more than 10 years after the original MRI. 44.9% Mean age at the time of initial imaging was 39.0 ± 15 years. At the time […]
The Neck Disability Index: a study of reliability and validity.
The Neck Disability Index (NDI) was developed by Vernon and Mior in the late 1980’s and published in 1991. It remains the most widely used outcome instrument for the assessment of patients with neck related disorders. The NDI was developed to provide an objective measure to assess activities of daily living (ADL) in patients with […]
Long-term outcomes of surgical and nonsurgical management of sciatica secondary to a lumbar disc herniation: 10 year results from the maine lumbar spine study.
The debate of surgical management vs. nonsurgical care for the treatment of sciatica resulting from a lumbar disc herniation remains ongoing. This study by Atlas et al (2005) represents a long term prospective investigation looking at the outcomes of surgery vs. conservative treatment up to ten years for patients with sciatica due to a disc […]
ISSLS Prize winner: The anatomy of failure in lumbar disc herniation: an in vivo, multimodal, prospective study of 181 subjects.
Conventional wisdom states that the mode of failure and cause of disc herniation is secondary to a rupture of nucleus material through the annulus fibrosis. In this paper, the senior author prospectively defined the nature of intraoperatively identified disc herniations in 181 consecutive patients qualified for inclusion. Inclusion criteria included requiring a single level lumbar […]
2009 ISSLS Prize Winner: Does discography cause accelerated progression of degeneration changes in the lumbar disc: a ten-year matched cohort study.
The 2009 ISSLS Prize Winner for the best paper was awarded to Carragee et al for the Paper Titled Does Discography Cause accelerated progression of degenerative changes in the lumbar Spine: In this paper, Dr. Carragee followed a group of asymptomatic volunteers who had discography from L3-S1 performed in 1997, and compared the results of […]
Predictors of the efficacy of epidural steroid injections for structural lumbar degenerative pathology.
This study which has been accepted and is currently pending publication in The Spine Journal presents an interesting predictive model for lumbar epidural steroid injection efficacy for those who have specific defined degenerative pathology. Treatment success for this study was defined by achieving at least a 7.1% improvement on the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI). Using […]
The natural history of spondylolysis and spondylolisthesis.
This is a classic Spine Study looking at the natural history of spondylolysis and spondylolisthesis in a population of 500 first grade students in a small community bordering New York and Pennsylvania. The initial enrollment period was 1954 to 1957. The inclusion criteria was that the first grader had parental permission and attended one of […]
1997 Volvo Award winner in clinical studies. Degenerative lumbar spondylolisthesis with spinal stenosis: a prospective, randomized study comparing decompressive laminectomy and arthrodesis with and without spinal instrumentation.
This prominent historical study by Fischgrund et al published in 1997, was a well-controlled randomized trial looking at both clinical and radiographic outcomes of lumbar laminectomy with arthrodesis surgery in patients with degenerative spondylolisthesis and spinal stenosis. Patients in this study (N=68) were randomly assigned to two treatment groups; Lumbar laminectomy with posterolateral intertransverse process […]
Abnormal magnetic-resonance scans of the cervical spine in asymptomatic subjects. A prospective investigation.
This classic paper published by Boden et al (1990) is a parallel study to the one investigating abnormal magnetic resonance imaging scans of the lumbar spine in asymptomatic subjects that was published the same year. This study included 63 asymptomatic volunteers who were screened and underwent an MRI scan of the cervical spine. The MRI […]
Accelerated degeneration of the segment adjacent to a lumbar fusion.
The study published by Lee in 1988 was intended to descriptively define conditions and pathomechanics at adjacent segments following a lumbar fusion. This was at a time period where the effectiveness of lumbar fusion for low back pain was one of the foremost questions to be answered and potential complications of the procedure were largely […]
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