An experience with soft transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion in postoperative discitis not responding to conservative treatment.

OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of soft Transforaminal Interbody Lumbar Interbody Fusion (sTLIF) in postoperative discitis not responding to conservative treatment. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted in Department of Spine Surgery, CMH Rawalpindi from August 2016 to July 2019. Patients who underwent discectomy were observed and those presenting with postoperative discitis were included in the study. Pain was noted on visual analogue scale before and after the intervention and differences in two readings were noted. Data was collected on predesigned proforma. Statistical analysis was done on SPSS 20.0. RESULTS Mean age of these patients was 45±12.34 years. The mean pain score on VAS before treatment was 8.33±0.65 and after treatment was 2±0.95. There was statistically significant reduction in pre-treatment and post-treatment pain on VAS (p=0.000). CONCLUSIONS Postoperative discitis is present among a small number of patients after spine surgery and pain is significantly reduced after the treatment of discitis with TLIF.