A report presented at EUROSPINE 2019 shows that decompression surgery remains the ‘gold-standard’ for lumbar spinal stenosis.
A long-term study looking at decompression surgery versus stand-alone interspinous process devices in the treatment of spinal stenosis was reported at EUROSPINE 2019. The results demonstrate that even though implantation of a stand-alone interspinous process device (IPD) can be very successful in treating intermittent spinal stenosis, there is a high re-operation rate and this does not justify its use and therefore simple decompression is more effective. This is the finding of a five-year double blind Randomised Control Trial and these results of which were presented at the 2019 Eurospine annual meeting (16-18 October, Helsinki, Finland).
The results for patients treated with IPD were good and therefore using a interspinous process is acceptable however because the re-operation after two years is so high, the study concluded that the Gold Standard treatment for spinal stenosis is a simple decompression.