The impact of adjacent level disc degeneration on health status outcomes following lumbar fusion.

Study Design: A retrospective review of patient outcomes after lumbar spinal fusion.

Objective: To determine whether patients with a fusion ending adjacent to a "degenerated disc" (DDD group) had worse clinical outcomes than patients with fusions ending adjacent to "normal" discs (NL group).

Summary Of Background Data: Although it has been suggested that creating a rigid motion segment adjacent to a degenerated segment may negatively impact clinical outcomes after lumbar fusion, this question has not been addressed to our knowledge in the English literature.