Aim:

To assess sufficiency of dynamic screw addition to instrumented fusion segment to prevent development of the adjacent segment disease (ASD).

Material and Methods:

Medical records were retrospectively reviewed for degenerative lumbar spine surgery from 2016 to 2018. Patients with degenerative lumbar spinal disease constituted the core sample for this study. To obtain homogeneity of both groups only patients involved with degenerative lumbar spine disease were included. All surgeries were performed by the same spine surgeon (EO).

Results:

This series included 87 (66 female, 21 male) patients, with a median age of 56 years. Mean follow-up period was 10.24 months for dynamic screw added patients and 16.06 months for only fusion patients. Eleven patients with adjacent level disease were diagnosed only in alone fusion group (17.7 %) and no adjacent level disease was diagnosed in upper level dynamic screw added group. Adjacent level disease is statistically significant in alone fusion group (p = 0.03).

Conclusions:

In our study, there is a statistically significant difference between only fusion instrumentation and dynamic screw added fusion in radiologic and clinical adjacent segment disease. Although long-term followed-up, studies are needed to assess the sufficiency of dynamic screw addition to instrumented fusion segment to prevent the adjacent segment disease.

Keywords: Dynamic screws; adjacent segment disease; fusion; degenerative lumbar spine