Clasificación radiográfica de la degeneración facetaria lumbar: Evaluación intra e interobservador

SUMMARY. Although the facet pathology, is a clear entity, there are not well defined diagnostic criteria. The orthopedic classifications are created in order to have a general agreement for the prognosis and treatment of a specific disease. Purpose. Establish a classification for the lumbar facet degeneration and analyzed it using a statistical analysis to obtain the intraobserver and interobserver reliability. Material and methods. Twenty-five MRI images of the lumbar spine were evaluated by twelve surgeons. In order to evaluate the intraobserver reliability, a comparison between two viewing for the same surgeon is presented. For the interobserver reliability, an agreement percentage for each grade and the kappa coefficient were calculated. Results. There was an intraobserver and interobserver agreement in 90% and 87.7% respectively. The mean kappa coefficient was 0.74. Discussion. A classification is a pre requisite to the definition of a specific treatment, and for this purpose a degenerative lumbar facet classification is presented.