Early Surgery (Within 24 Hours) Benefits Patients Suffering from Acute Thoracolumbar Spinal Cord Injury: A Meta-analysis.

Study Design: A meta-analysis of early surgery for acute thoracolumbar spinal cord injury.

Objective: To evaluate whether early surgery increases the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) grade of patients confronted with acute thoracolumbar spinal cord injury.

Summary Of Background Data: The idea that early surgery aids the recovery of spinal cord function in patients confronted with acute thoracolumbar spinal cord injury is controversial.

Methods: All articles were retrieved from the PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Scopus databases, which were searched from onset until 1 May 2021. All data are presented as odds ratios (ORs) and mean deviations (MDs) with 95% confidential intervals (CIs).

Results: Ten studies, including 6 prospective studies, 3 retrospective studies, and 1 randomized controlled trial, containing 952 patients, were included in the analysis. The results showed that early surgery significantly reduced the number of patients with ASIA grade A (OR 0.27, 95% CI: 0.13-0.58, P <0.01) and B (OR 0.56, 95% CI: 0.39-0.82, P <0.01) status but greatly increased the number of patients with grade E status (OR 1.44, 95% CI: 1.06-1.96, P <0.01). Generally, the patients receiving early surgery achieved >1 ASIA grade improvement (OR 1.70, 95% CI: 1.31-2.21, P <0.01) or >2 ASIA grade (OR 3.55, 95% CI: 2.20-5.70, P <0.01) improvements. Although early surgery did not reduce the incidence of operative complications (OR 0.72, 95% CI: 0.45-1.16, P <0.01), the duration of hospitalization was greatly shortened (MD-3.48, 95% CI: -0.45 to-2.91, P <0.01).

Conclusions: The spinal cord function of acute thoracolumbar spinal cord injury patients can benefit from early decompression. This conclusion should be further verified with randomized controlled trials.