Minimally Invasive Treatment for Lumbar Disc Herniation: A Matched Comparison Between Tubular Microdiscectomy and Percutaneous Endoscopic Lumbar Discectomy.

Background and objectives Discectomy for lumbar disc herniation is the most common spinal surgical procedure. Technological advances have led to the emergence of minimally invasive surgical approaches such as tubular microdiscectomy (TMD) and percutaneous endoscopic lumbar discectomy (PELD). The purpose of this study was to compare the clinical outcomes of PELD to those of TMD at one-year follow-up. Materials and methods This observational registry-based (Spine Tango) cohort study included patients with symptomatic lumbar disc herniation submitted to PELD or TMD. The inclusion criteria were patients who underwent minimally invasive lumbar discectomy (PELD or TMD), patients who attended a follow-up after a minimum of 12 months post surgery, and valid pre- and postoperative questionaries. The primary endpoint was defined as the difference between pre- and postoperative Core Outcome Measures Index (COMI) for the back. The matching was based on a 1:1 nearest neighbor matching without replacement. Results A total of 109 patients were included in this study. Propensity score matching (PSM) was performed achieving 86 patients in the matched sample. Regarding COMI improvement, we found no significant difference between the PELD and TMD groups (paired t-test: estimate, -0.23; standard error, 0.6; p=0.7), and we also did not find any significant difference between groups concerning Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) and EuroQol 5 Dimension (EQ-5D). Medication usage and return to work were similar among the matched groups. Conclusions PELD is a technique that minimizes tissue damage achieving good clinical outcomes similar to TMD. This was observed one year after surgery from patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) that measured pain improvement, disability, and quality of life.