Patients who undergo spinal surgery will occasionally develop neurologic complications following the procedure – namely problems with motor function and sensation. However, encouraging new data suggest that in the majority of patients, these complications resolve and don’t impair quality of life.

The new research – conducted by members of the International Spine Study Group from multiple academic centers, and presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting reported the rates of recovery and time to recovery for neurologic complications resulting from spinal deformity surgery in the largest population of Adult Deformity patients reported on in the literature. By following 73 patients with neurologic deficits in a study of over 560 patients, the authors found that 51 percent of cases were neurologically recovered by an average of 7 months after their surgery; another 36 percent experienced partial recovery.

"Our findings suggest that although neurologic complications will occur in 17–22 percent of cases in adult spinal deformity surgery, 87 percent of these cases will experience complete or partial resolution," comments Han Jo Kim, MD, an orthopedic spine surgeon at Hospital for Special Surgery. "These findings suggest that permanent neurologic deficits will occur with an incidence between 2–3 percent. This can be valuable information for patient counseling and education but it also leads the way to future studies for discovering methods for preventing these complications."