ON THE EXTENT OF PREOPERATIVE RADIOLOGICAL AND CT EXAMINATION OF PATIENTS WITH DEGENERATIVE DISEASES OF THE LUMBAR SPINE

Objective. To specify the extent of preoperative examination of patients with lumbar degenerative diseases and to study the effect of examination results on the tactics of surgical treatment. Material and Methods. The study included retrospective analysis of 1340 patients with lumbar degenerative diseases treated in the Neurosurgical Department No. 2 of Novosibirsk RITO n.a. Ya.L. Tsivyan during 2017. Results. The average height of the intervertebral disc as evaluated with MRI was 7.4 ± 1.8 mm, and that evaluated with MSCT – 4.9 ± 1.5 mm, with a statistically significant difference between them (p < 0.05). Immediate preoperative examination of patients with lumbar disc herniation showed reduction or lysis of the hernia fragment in some of them. Reduction of the leg pain and hernia size (by more than 50 %) and lysis of the herniated disc fragment evidenced by MRI were observed in 21 (3.2 %) patients. Comparison of the preplanned and actually performed extent of decompression and stabilization interventions showed that tactics and/ or extent of surgical treatment changed in 37.6 % of cases. Conclusion. The complex of instrumental radiological and neuroimaging studies, as well as methods of provocative procedure in the lumbar spine performed immediately before the planned surgical treatment allow choosing the proper treatment tactics, specifying or correcting the volume of surgical treatment, and to prognosing its outcome in lumbar degenerative diseases.