Indirect decompression of lumbar stenosis with transpsoas interbody cages and percutaneous posterior instrumentation.

Background: The minimally invasive lateral transpsoas retroperitoneal approach to address lumbar stenosis offers advantages to traditional approaches, including sparing of the AP annulus and longitudinal ligament and less risk to the peritoneal contents and retroperitoneal vascular structures. Few studies have presented longitudinal measures of radiographic indirect decompression and relief of pain and restoration of function using the lateral approach to spine fusion.

Question/purposes: We determined (1) whether radiographic measures suggestive of decompression were achieved after surgery and maintained 1 year after surgery, (2) whether the intervention resulted in sustained improvements in patient-reported outcomes scores 1 year after surgery, and (3) the frequency of pseudarthrosis on CT scans at 1 year after surgery in patients with moderate or severe lumbar stenosis treated with the approach.