ArticleJournal of spine surgery (Hong Kong)2024
The percentage of sacroiliac fusions done in the U.S. by non-surgical specialties has increased.
Article in Journal of spine surgery (Hong Kong), 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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.
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.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Surgical fusion of the sacroiliac (SI) joint is often performed to manage chronic lower back or buttock pain. When Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes were introduced, SI joint fusion procedures were done primarily by orthopaedic surgeons and neurosurgeons. The purpose of this study was to examine the utilization of SI joint fusion CPT codes by physician specialty over time. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted using the PearlDiver database. The database was queried using CPT codes to identify patients who underwent SI joint fusion via percutaneous, open, or trauma codes. Specialties queried included surgical specialties (orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery) and non-surgical specialties [physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R), neurology, anesthesiology, pain medicine]. Total number and number per year of SI joint fusion procedures were identified for each specialty group. Trends of SI fusion billing for the years 2015 to 2021 were compared between surgical specialties and non-surgical specialties. Results: Comparing 2015 and 2021, the SI fusion codes submitted across all three groups (percutaneous, open, and trauma) increased for non-surgical specialties compared to surgical specialties. Between 2015 and 2021, the total number of percutaneous procedures submitted by all specialties increased by 294%, while the number of procedures being submitted by non-surgical specialties increased by 25,050%. Conclusions: Our study demonstrated how quickly and to what degree the procedure market can react to higher work relative value unit (RVU) value codes. Despite requiring less overall time and utilizing an intra-articular rather than a transfixing approach, non-surgical specialties submitted the same CPT code as surgical specialties performing the transfixing procedure at an increasing rate during the study period. With the introduction of new technologies to perform SI fixation and a new code to capture the intra-articular procedure, future studies could examine whether the number of SI fusion procedures performed by the various physician specialties stabilizes over time.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.