Evidence map›Paper›PMID 32935576›Full record

ArticleGlobal spine journal2021

Is Endoscopic Discectomy the Next Gold Standard in the Management of Lumbar Disc Disease? Systematic Review and Superiority Analysis.

Sathish Muthu, Eswar Ramakrishnan, Girinivasan Chellamuthu

Open access · goldAbstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Global spine journal, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
40citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
5.7field-weighted citation impact, top 3% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

40 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 72 citations in OpenAlex.

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  8. Biomechanical effects of incremental resection of the ligamentum flavum and lumbar facet joint using a contralateral endoscopic approach.European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society · 2026
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.

Sathish MuthuGovernment Hospital, Karur, Tamil Nadu, India.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7143-4354
Eswar RamakrishnanOrthopaedic Research Group, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
Girinivasan ChellamuthuOrthopaedic Research Group, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
Orthopaedic Research Group · INMadras Medical College · IN

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

STUDY

designSystematic review and meta-analysis.

objectivesWe performed this meta-analysis to evaluate whether endoscopic discectomy (ED) shows superiority compared with the current gold standard of microdiscectomy (MD) in management of lumbar disc disease. MATERIALS AND

methodsWe conducted independent and duplicate electronic database search including PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library from 1990 till April 2020 for studies comparing ED and MD in the management of lumbar disc disease. Analysis was performed in R platform using OpenMeta[Analyst] software.

resultsWe included 27 studies, including 11 randomized controlled trials (RCTs), 7 nonrandomized prospective, and 9 retrospective studies involving 4018 patients in the meta-analysis. We stratified the results based on the study design. Considering the heterogeneity in some results between study designs, we weighed our conclusion essentially based on results of RCTs. On analyzing the RCTs, superiority was established at 95% confidence interval for ED compared with MD in terms of functional outcomes like Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) score (

conclusionOur meta-analysis established the superiority of endoscopic discectomy in outcome measures like ODI score, duration of surgery, overall complications, length of hospital stay and noninferiority in other measures analyzed. With recent advances in the field of ED, the procedure has the potential to take over the place of MD as the gold standard of care in management of lumbar disc disease.

Indexed as

disc herniationendoscopic discectomygold standardlumbar disc diseasemicrodiscectomyPROM

Identifiers

PMID32935576
PMCPMC8351066
OpenAlexW3087435864

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.