Functional Outcome of Patients with Lumbar Intervertebral Disc Herniation after Minimally Invasive Microdiscectomy

Introduction: Low back pain is very common worldwide and lumbosacral radiculopathy is an extremely painful condition. In this study we aimed to assess the functional outcome in patients who underwent minimally invasive microdisectomy at our institution. Methodology: A prospective study was conducted in the Department of Orthopedics, AJ Institute of Medical Sciences, Mangalore, Karnataka from August 2014 till August 2016. After taking approval of the institutional ethics committee, all patients aged more than 18 years, who presented to the outpatient clinic of the Department of Orthopedics, AJ Institute of Medical Sciences, Mangalore, Karnataka with complaints of leg or back pain. We assesed pain and functionality using Japanese Orthopedic Association questionnaire (JOA) preoperatively, 1 month, 3 months and 6 months postoperatively. Patients were asked to rate their level of well being after surgery using the Macnab’s criteria. Results:We included 53 patients during the study period, average age was 40.17 ± 8.5 years. 32 patients were males. Using Macnab’s criteria 35% reported good level of well being and no patient reported poor level of well being at the end of 6 months postoperatively. 28.3 % had excellent, 62.3 % had good, 7.5 % had fair and 1.9 % had poor results with JOA score at the end of the study. JOA score improved from a mean of 10.3 preoperatively to 25.45 post-operatively at 6 months (p <0.001). Conclusions: Findings of our study show that minimally invasive lumbar microdiscectomy cause very few postoperative complications, shorter stays in hospital, improve objective functionality scores postoperatively and patients rate well being assesment scores as good to excellent.