Spinal deformity surgery is accompanied by serious complications: report from the Morbidity and Mortality Database of the Scoliosis Research Society from 2013 to 2020.

Purpose: The Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) report of the Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) has been collected since 1965 and since 1968 submission of complications has been required of all members. Since 2009, the SRS has collected information on death, blindness, and neurological deficit, with acute infection being added in 2012 and unintentional return to the operating room (OR) being added in 2017. In this report, we use the most recent data submitted to the SRS M&M database to determine the rate of neurological deficit, blindness, acute infection, unintentional return to the OR, and death, while also comparing this information to previous reports.

Methods: The SRS M&M database was queried for all cases from 2013 to 2020. The rates of death, vision loss, neurological deficit, acute infection, and unintentional return to the OR were then calculated and analyzed. The rates were compared to previously published data if available. Differences in complication rates between years were analyzed with Poisson regression with significance set at α = 0.05.

Results: The total number of cases submitted per year varied with a maximum of 49,615 in 2018 and a minimum of 40,464 in 2020. The overall reported complication rate from 2013 to 2020 was 2.86%. The overall mortality rate ranged from 0.09% in 2018 to 0.14% in 2015. The number of patients with visual impairment ranged from 4 to 13 between 2013 and 2015 (no data on visual impairment were collected after 2015). The overall infection rate varied from 0.95 in 2020 to 1.30% in 2015. When the infection rate was analyzed based on spinal deformity group, the neuromuscular scoliosis group consistently had the highest infection rate ranging from 3.24 to 3.94%. The overall neurological deficit rate ranged from 0.74 to 0.94%, with the congenital kyphosis and dysplastic spondylolisthesis groups having the highest rates. The rates of unintentional return to the OR ranged from 1.60 to 1.79%. Multiple groups showed a statistically significant decreasing trend for infection, return to the operating room, neurologic deficit, and death.

Conclusions: Neuromuscular scoliosis had the highest infection rate among all spinal deformity groups. Congenital kyphosis and dysplastic spondylolisthesis had the highest rate of neurological deficit postoperatively. This is similar to previously published data. Contrary to previous reports, neuromuscular scoliosis did not have the highest annual death rate. Multiple groups showed a statistically significant decreasing trend in complication rates during the reporting period, with only mortality in degenerative spondylolisthesis significantly trending upwards.

Level Of Evidence: Level III.