Xiaosheng Lu, Wei Li, Jichen He, Xiaoming Peng and Jingmin Zhao
Objective: This study aims to research the clinical outcome differences between micro discectomy and open fenestration discectomy in the treatment of lumbar disc herniation.
Methods: A retrospective study was carried out in two randomly allocated Groups totaling 467 patients with lumbar disc herniation, the micro discectomy Group A and the conventional discectomy Group B. Patient profiles between the two groups was not significant (P>0.05). JOA scores and modified MacNab criteria were used to evaluate clinical outcomes. Operation time, approach incision length, intra-operative blood loss, hospital stay and total average costs were analyzed.
Results: There were statistically significant differences of the indicators such as operative time and bleeding volume etc. in the two groups. There were no position errors and other complications such as nerve root injury, cauda equina injury and infection. No significant difference of JOA score improvement rate or the excellent and good rates was found between the two groups (P>0.05).
Conclusion: Both methods can obtain the same satisfactory results of therapy, but the microscope methods have a number of advantages, such as minimal invasion, less blood loss, shorter operation time, shorter hospitalization time and fewer medical expenses etc., which can be one of the ideal minimal invasive operations�¯�¼�Ž