Functional and pain evaluation in patients with spinal deformity surgically treated

Abstract

Background:The degenerative spine has an incidence greater than 60% in people over 60 years old. Functionality and pain are assessed by the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) and the visual analog pain scale (VAPS), respectively. Objective:The objective of the study was to evaluate the functionality and pain 1 year after surgery, in patients with degenerative spine. Methods: This was a comparative, longitudinal study, in patients with degenerative spine surgically managed during 2016-2018. Functional aspects and pain were evaluated before surgery and 1 year later using ODI and VAPS. Descriptive statistics, measures of central tendency and dispersion, Student's t-test were used for the difference between the pre-and post-operative values of both scales. Results: There were 18 patients. Of these, 15 completed the follow-up; eight were men and seven women. The average age was 63.5 ± 4.8 years; 13 presented moderate post-surgical functional limitation, two intense functional limitation. There were statistically significant differences between the pre-and post-operative values for ODI and VAPS (p = 0.011 and p = 0.017, respectively). Conclusions: Functionality and pain evaluated 1 year after surgery, have a statistically significant difference compared to evaluations before surgery in patients with spine deformity surgically treated.