The Effects of Body Mass Index on Lumbar Microdiscectomy Outcomes (In press)

The incidence of obesity has risen steadily to epidemic proportions in many regions of the world. Surgeons often encounter problems in surgeries on the obese patients.  In this study, we evaluated the effect of Body Mass Index (BMI) on outcome of patients undergoing lumbar microdiscectomy.

  This was primarily a case series retrospective study of patients who underwent single level lumbar microdiscectomy at our institution between January 2014 and April 2018. BMI was used to categorize our patients. Outcome measures were Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), and Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). The Patients were also analyzed according to the operative time, average blood loss during surgery, hematoma formation, wound infection, CSF leak, deep vein thrombosis, length of stay after surgery, recurrent disc herniation and neurologic deficit. ANOVA and regression analysis were used to assess differences between variables.

Five_ hundred Patients (225 male and 275 female) with a mean age of 40.3 ± 5.2 years old (ranged 19_70) who underwent single-level lumbar microdiscectomy were enrolled for the study. All patients were followed up for 24 months after surgery. The VAS and ODI were significantly improved in all patients. There was no significant difference between groups with respect to the operative time, average blood loss during surgery, hematoma formation, wound infection, CSF leak, deep vein thrombosis, length of stay after surgery, recurrent disc herniation and neurologic deficit.

The findings from this study showed that BMI does not have negative impact on outcome of patients undergoing lumbar microdiscectomy.