Health-related quality of life following decompression compared to decompression and fusion for degenerative lumbar spondylolisthesis: a Canadian multicentre study.

Background Decompression alone (D) is a well-accepted treatment for patients with lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) causing neurogenic claudication; however, D is controversial in patients with LSS who have degenerative spondylolisthesis (DLS). Our goal was to compare the outcome of anatomy-preserving D with decompression and fusion (DF) for patients with grade I DLS. We compared patients with DLS who had elective primary 1–2 level spinal D at 1 centre with a cohort who had 1–2 level spinal DF at 5 other centres.