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- Professor of Clinical Neurosurgery, School of Medicine, State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York, and Chief of Neurosurgical Spine and Education, NYU Winthrop Hospital, NYU Winthrop NeuroScience/Neurosurgery, Mineola, New York 11501, United States.
DOI:10.25259/SNI-290-2019
Copyright: © 2019 Surgical Neurology International This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.How to cite this article: Epstein NE. Why Would Two Patients with No Disease Be Offered Unnecessary Transforaminal Lumbar Interbody Fusions (TLIF)?. Surg Neurol Int 25-Jun-2019;10:114
How to cite this URL: Epstein NE. Why Would Two Patients with No Disease Be Offered Unnecessary Transforaminal Lumbar Interbody Fusions (TLIF)?. Surg Neurol Int 25-Jun-2019;10:114. Available from: http://surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint-articles/9400/
Date of Submission
06-May-2019
Date of Acceptance
06-May-2019
Date of Web Publication
25-Jun-2019
We are seeing more and more patients undergoing unnecessary trigger point injections, or more critically, epidural injections (ESI) performed by various specialists (neurosurgery, neurology, orthopedics, pain management, anesthesia, radiologists/neuroradiologists).
We are also witnessing a huge increase in unnecessary transforaminal lumbar interbody fusions (TLIF) being offered to patients with no disease (i.e. pain alone with no neurological deficit, or abnormal radiographic (MR/CT) findings). In fact, we just saw two such cases within one week.
Both patients were middle aged, and had undergone several ESI/yr for many years and were now being offered single or multilevel TLIF by both neurosurgeons and orthopedists.
Case Description
Two middle-aged patients complained of low back pain for over a decade. Both patients had received multiple ESI per year for many years. Both had normal neurological examinations, and both had MR and/or CT studies showing no “surgical” spinal disease (e.g. minimal non focal degenerative changes). Nevertheless, both patients were offered single or multilevel TLIF by several neurosurgeons and/or orthopedists.
Ultimately, both patients were convinced to go to neurology for conservative non-surgical management. Nevertheless, they had a myriad of questions that included: how could surgery be recommended if I did not need it? Why did their physicians say that a fusion was necessary? Why did they say surgery was needed if the examination and X-ray studies were normal?
How can we stop this TLIF epidemic?
What would you have done? We look forward to the participation of our readers.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Journal or its management.
