Syed Shahzad Hussain, Usman Ahmed Kambooh, Asif Raza, Adil Amin, Saman Shahid, Naveed Ashraf.
Postoperative Wound Pain and Hospital Stay in patients of Open Lumbar Discectomy (OLD) Versus Endoscopic Lumbar Discectomy (ELD) in Lumbar Disc Herniation (LDH).
Pak J Neuro Surg Jan ;24(1):56-66.

Background: Endoscopic lumbar discectomy is also beneficial regarding relieving wound pain, less hospital stay and smaller incisions. We compared visual analog scores (VAS) and hospital stay in patients treated with either endoscopic lumbar discectomy or open lumbar discectomy postoperatively. Material and Methods: Half patients underwent open lumbar discectomy – OLD (group A) and half operated with endoscopic lumbar discectomy – ELD (group B). The pain was quantified through visual analog score (VAS) observation in all patients. A preoperative medical management included prescribing a combination of an analgesic and a muscle relaxant along with physiotherapy with an avoidance of lifting heavy loads. Mann- Whitney (U) tests were applied for the comparison of postoperative VAS and hospital stay between groups. Results: 85% patients were having left sided prolapsed paracentral disc, and 15% were having right sided prolapsed paracentral disc. The mean postoperative VAS was 4 in patients treated with ELD and it was 1.32 in patients treated with OLD. The mean hospital stay was 1.5 days in ELD treatment, whereas, it was 2.5 days in OLD treatment. A significant difference (p=0.037) was found in the comparison of mean post-operative VAS between two vertebral levels (i.e., L4-L5 & L5-S1). The post-operative VAS and hospital stay (days) in ELD group were statistically significantly higher than the OLD group (p values 0.000).Conclusion: ELD procedure was effective as compared to open lumbar discectomy in terms of postoperative wound site pain and hospital stay. Endoscopic Lumbar discectomy is a minimally invasive procedure for discectomy.

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