Table of Contents    
Editorial
 
The theory of the five horses
Michele Conti
Chief of Spine Surgery, Clinical Hospital "Pederzoli" Peschiera del Garda and Clinical Hospital "Madonna della Salute" Porto Viro; Italy.

Article ID: 100009S05MC2015
doi:10.5348/S05-2015-9-ED-7

Address correspondence to:
Michele Conti
Rovereto, Trento, Italy, 38068

Access full text article on other devices

  Access PDF of article on other devices

[HTML Abstract]   [PDF Full Text] [Print This Article]
[Similar article in Pumed] [Similar article in Google Scholar]

How to cite this article
Conti M. The theory of the five horses. Edorium J Surg 2015;2:26–28.


INTRODUCTION

The low back pain is very common in our time. The main cause is the lifestyle [1] [2] [3] [4]:

We are always sitting, we do not have time for our fitness, the stress is very high. The result is change of our postural condition with degeneration of the backs muscles, degeneration of the lumbar disc because the greater load is in sitting position and bending forward, exactly like in our office.

In the last 20 years, the spine surgery is changed, in the past the neurosurgeons treated only the discus hernia and vertebral stenosis. The first with the microdiscectomy in according with Caspar technique, the second with the laminectomy.

The results have been not so good. The main reason was the misunderstanding of the stability concept and the growing arthrosis as effect of the instability.

The vertebral fixation in degenerative lumbar disease with pedicle screws and rods is increasing in most part of the spine surgery centers.


Materials and Methods

We treated 234 patients in four years (2011–2014) for the lumbar stenosis. We divide in three groups for the difference surgical treatment. The median age is 64.5 years old, 125 patients are female and 109 was male. The median follow-up is 2.8 years.

All patients are operated with neurological sign of radiculopathy increased in loading or claudicatio spinalis.

The first group (112 patients) had the lumbar stenosis at level L4-L5 with the other level without significant degenerative signs.

The second group (97 patients) had the lumbar stenosis at 2 levels L3-L4 and L4-L5.

The third group (25 patients) had a discus hernia L4-L5 with Modic sign type II.

The treatment were different, in the first group we performed laminoartrectomy L4 and pedicle screws and rods fixation L4-L5.

In the second group we performed laminoartrectomy L3-L4 and pedicle screws and rods fixation L3-L4-L5.

In the third group, we performed a discectomy, pedicle screws and semy-rigid rods fixation L4-L5 (Figure 1).

The follow-up is analyzed accordingly with Table 1:

  1. neurological improvement, recovery of the neurological deficit, remission of claudicatio spinalis
  2. completely remission of the legs pain
  3. low back pain remission

Cursor on image to zoom/Click text to open image
Figure 1: Semi-rigid rods: The rods middle part is a device with ability to move for 6-7 degree in three- dimensional space. The device used : TDX posterior dynamic stabilization of Orthofix.



Cursor on image to zoom/Click text to open image
Table 1: The results of our study



Results

The results are summarized in Table 1.

The first group is composed of patients with lumbar stenosis at single level, the result demonstrated good results for neurological deficit, improvement of the legs pain, not so good for the low back pain.

The second group is composed of patients with lumbar stenosis at 2 levels, the result demonstrated not so good results than the first group with a satisfactions patient of 59.8% versus 78.3%.

The third group is composed of patients with discus hernia and Modic sign type 2, the results have been very good for the neurological improvement and low back pain.

The patients of the third group are operated with semi-rigid system to avoid the higher stress at the closer levels. The outcome is very good but the cases number is still not significant.

Discussion

The results showed a good outcome for neurological deficit and remission of the radicular symptomatology is avoided with screws and rods fixation. The results for low back pain are good only when the level operated is one. With this clinical study we demonstrated the theory of the "five horses".

The lumbar spine is like a chariot pulled from five horses (the lumbar discs); when one horse work less, the chariot go well if other horses supply the strength. When we fix every disc with radiological alteration, we destroy the balance of the spine: high tension of spine ligaments [5], stress of joints facets, high work load on the not operated disc [6] [7] [8], surgical damage of the lumbar muscle.

For this reason is common today the minimally invasive lumbar surgery [8] with percutaneous approach to one lumbar level, discectomy with lateral approach (TLIF: transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion) [9].

The limit of the minimally invasive surgery is the higher incidences of nerve root injury, dural tears, increased intraoperative times, blood loss and re-operation [10].

The open surgery is more safe for the nerves and permit to perform the intertransverse arthrodesis with bone autologous. The advantage of the minimally invasive surgery is without doubt the preservation of the muscles integrity [11].

The patients of the third group are operated with semi-rigid system to avoid the higher stress at the closer levels . This topic is today much debated [12].


Conclusion

The theory of five horses is the result of our own clinical experience, supported by international biography; the best surgical result for degenerative lumbar spine disease is to operate one single level to resolve the neurological problem and respect the benign natural history of spine aging.

Keywords: Back pain, Caspar technique, Discus hernia, Lumbar disc, Lumbar stenosis, Modic sign, Rods fixation, Vertebral stenosis


References
  1. Kim SM, Lee SH, Lee BR, Hwang JW. Analysis of the Correlation Among Age, Disc Morphology, Positive Discography and Prognosis in Patients With Chronic Low Back Pain. Ann Rehabil Med 2015 Jun;39(3):340–6.   [CrossRef]   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 1
  2. Junqueira DR, Ferreira ML, Refshauge K, et al. Heritability and lifestyle factors in chronic low back pain: results of the Australian twin low back pain study (The AUTBACK study). Eur J Pain 2014 Nov;18(10):1410–8.   [CrossRef]   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 2
  3. Arab AM, Nourbakhsh MR. Hamstring muscle length and lumbar lordosis in subjects with different lifestyle and work setting: comparison between individuals with and without chronic low back pain. J Back Musculoskelet Rehabil 2014;27(1):63–70.   [CrossRef]   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 3
  4. Briggs AM, Jordan JE, O'Sullivan PB, et al. Individuals with chronic low back pain have greater difficulty in engaging in positive lifestyle behaviours than those without back pain: an assessment of health literacy. BMC Musculoskelet Disord 2011 Jul 15;12:16   [CrossRef]   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 4
  5. Kim TH, Lee HM, Moon SH, et al. Joint laxity negatively correlates with lumbar disc degeneration in young adults. Spine (Phila Pa 1976) 2013 Nov 15;38(24):E1541–7.   [CrossRef]   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 5
  6. Simmonds AM, Rampersaud YR, Dvorak MF, Dea N, Melnyk AD, Fisher CG. Defining the inherent stability of degenerative spondylolisthesis: a systematic review. J Neurosurg Spine 2015 Aug;23(2):178–89.   [CrossRef]   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 6
  7. Ellingson AM, Nuckley DJ. Altered helical axis patterns of the lumbar spine indicate increased instability with disc degeneration. J Biomech 2015 Jan 21;48(2):361–9.   [CrossRef]   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 7
  8. Li Z, Li F, Yu S, et al. Two-year follow-up results of the Isobar TTL Semi-Rigid Rod System for the treatment of lumbar degenerative disease. J Clin Neurosci 2013 Mar;20(3):394–9.   [CrossRef]   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 8
  9. Liu J, Deng H, Long X, Chen X, Xu R, Liu Z. A comparative study of perioperative complications between transforaminal versus posterior lumbar interbody fusion in degenerative lumbar spondylolisthesis. Eur Spine J 2015 Jul 1.   [CrossRef]   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 9
  10. Lubelski D, Mihalovich KE, Skelly AC, et al. Is minimal access spine surgery more cost-effective than conventional spine surgery? Spine (Phila Pa 1976) 2014 Oct 15;39(22 Suppl 1):S65–74.   [CrossRef]   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 10
  11. Lau D, Terman SW, Patel R, La Marca F, Park P. Incidence of and risk factors for superior facet violation in minimally invasive versus open pedicle screw placement during transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion: a comparative analysis. J Neurosurg Spine 2013 Apr;18(4):356–61.   [CrossRef]   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 11
  12. Oktenoglu T, Erbulut DU, Kiapour A, et al. Pedicle screw-based posterior dynamic stabilisation of the lumbar spine: in vitro cadaver investigation and a finite element study. Comput Methods Biomech Biomed Engin 2015 Aug;18(11):1252–61.   [Pubmed]    Back to citation no. 12

[HTML Abstract]   [PDF Full Text]

Author Contributions:
Michele Conti – Substantial contributions to conception and design, Acquisition of data, Analysis and interpretation of data, Drafting the article, Revising it critically for important intellectual content, Final approval of the version to be published
Guarantor of submission
The corresponding author is the guarantor of submission.
Source of support
None
Conflict of interest
Authors declare no conflict of interest.
Copyright
© 2015 Michele Conti. This article is distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original author(s) and original publisher are properly credited. Please see the copyright policy on the journal website for more information.