Abstracts Posters SICOT-SOF meeting Gothenburg 2010 _2_

Poster
Topic: Spine
Abstract number: 25655
HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY OF LIFE IN SURGICALLY TREATED LUMBAR
DISC HERNIATION PATIENTS -LONG-TERM FOLLOW-UP
Katarina SILVERPLATS 1 , Bengt LIND 2 , Björn ZOEGA 3 , Klas HALLDIN 1 , Helena
BRISBY 1
1 Dept of Orthopaedics, Inst. of Clinical Sciences, University of Gothenburg,
Gothenburg (SWEDEN), 2 Gothenburg Spine Center, Gothenburg (SWEDEN),
3 Landspitali University Hospital, Reykjavik, Iceland, Reykjavík (ICELAND)
Health related quality of life (HRQoL) instruments has gained increased interest in
the evaluation of medical treatments over the last years. The present prospective
long-term follow-up study investigates the influence of preoperative factors on
HRQoL and their improvement after lumbar disc herniation surgery. One-hundredseventeen
patients (age 39±11 years, 46% women) surgically treated for lumbar disc
herniations were evaluated with the self-completion HRQoL instrument EQ-5D.
Follow-up time was 2 years and long-term (mean 6.9 years). Baseline data (gender,
age and surgical level), questionnaires about leg pain duration and leg- and back
pain intensity (VAS) were obtained preoperatively. 82% of the patients answered the
EQ-5D questionnaire at the 2-year and 76% at the long-term follow-up.Eighty-five
percent of patients undergoing lumbar disc herniation surgery reported improved EQ-
5D 2 years after surgery and the improvement was stable at long-term follow-up. The
mean EQ-5D score improved significantly preoperatively from 0.12 to 0.69 (2-year)
and to 0.74 at the long-term follow-up. However, the HRQoL for this patient group did
not reach the level of the general population at any of the follow-ups which seemed
to be caused by long-standing pain in a subgroup of these patients. There were no
baseline factors that predicted a high EQ-5D during the two follow-ups. The pain
component (VAS leg/back) and the pain/discomfort EQ-5D-domain was
demonstrated to highly influence the overall EQ-5D score and its other included
domains. This suggests that HRQoL instruments in painful conditions are highly
influenced by the pain component.
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