The spine journal : official journal of the North American Spine Society
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Comparative Study
Comparing different chronic preoperative opioid use definitions on outcomes after spine surgery.
No consensus exists for defining chronic preoperative opioid use. Most spine studies rely solely on opioid duration to stratify patients into preoperative risk categories. ⋯ The Edlund definition is recommended for identifying patients at highest risk for postoperative opioid use. When opioid dosage is unavailable, the Schoenfeld definition is a reasonable choice with similar predictive ability. For patient-reported outcomes, either the Edlund or Schoenfeld definition is recommended. Future work should consider combing dosage and duration, with 3 and 6 month cutoffs, into chronic opioid use definitions.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The NECK trial: Effectiveness of anterior cervical discectomy with or without interbody fusion and arthroplasty in the treatment of cervical disc herniation; a double-blinded randomized controlled trial.
Motion preserving anterior cervical disc arthroplasty (ACDA) in patients with cervical radiculopathy was introduced to prevent symptomatic adjacent disc degeneration as compared with anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF). Prior reports suggest that ACDF is not more effective than anterior cervical discectomy (ACD) alone for the treatment of cervical radiculopathy. ⋯ The hypothesis that ACDA would lead to superior clinical outcome in comparison to ACDF or ACD could not be confirmed during a 2-year follow-up time period. Single level ACD without implanting an intervertebral device may be a reasonable alternative to ACDF or ACDA.