To fuse or not to fuse: The elderly patient with lumbar stenosis and low-grade spondylolisthesis. Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.

Background: The optimum surgical intervention for elderly patients with lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) and low-grade degenerative-spondylolisthesis (LGDS) has been extensively debated. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised-controlled-trials (RCTs) comparing the effectiveness of decompression-alone against the gold-standard approach of decompression-with-fusion (D + F) in elderly patients with LSS and LGDS.

Methods: A systematic literature search was performed on published databases from inception to October-2021.