Stenosis of the vertebral canal of the lumbar spine

The overall incidence of symptomatic lumbar spinal stenosis is about 10–15% among persons aged 50–70 years. Due to the aging of the population, the incidence of this pathology is constantly growing. The desire of older patients to preserve their quality of life and their functional abilities, along with the improvement of surgical techniques, leads to an increase in the number of surgical interventions for lumbar stenosis. This publication describes the classification of spinal canal stenosis. The clinical picture of this disease has been studied in detail. A special attention is paid to such diagnostic methods as computed tomography (CT), radiography, CT-myelography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Various methods of surgical treatment — decompression and decompression-stabilization — are described in detail.. The efficiency of various types of decompression operations are 72–80%, the results of surgery not differing statistically between the types of decompression (hemilaminectomy, interlaminectomy). Decompression-stabilization operations are used for progressive degenerative spinal deformity, destabilization after the surgical treatment, and disruption of the vertebral-pelvic relations. Currently, the following types of stabilization are used in the lumbar stenosis surgery: ALIF, PLIF, PLF, TLIF, XLIF, OLIF, and transpedicular fixation. The rate of complications in the stabilizing interventions is 27.6%; after decompression operations — 9.7%. The frequency of revision operations is also higher after stabilization — 10.3%, while after decompression it is 6.5%, which makes us cautious about these types of interventions. Systems of interosseous fixation are also used in the treatment of lumbar stenosis. In the 14 years of followup after interosseous fixation and decompression in 142 patients, 30 (21.1%) patients underwent revision interventions, with chronic pain (38.5%) and disc herniation (42.3%) being the main indication for repeated surgery in 26 of them.