ArticleCureus2025
The Early Clinical and Radiographic Outcomes of Robotic-Assisted Midline Lumbar Interbody Fusion (MIDLIF) With Expandable Interbody Spacers: A Case Series.
Article in Cureus, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Robotic-assisted midline lumbar interbody fusion for the treatment of degenerative lumbar spinal stenosis: a prospective, randomized, controlled, non-inferiority clinical trial protocol.Journal of spine surgery (Hong Kong) · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo assess the early clinical and radiological outcomes of the midline lumbar interbody fusion (MIDLIF) approach with the use of robotic assistance and expandable spacers.
methodsA retrospective case series was performed on patients who underwent MIDLIF procedures for the treatment of degenerative spinal diseases, with a minimum of three months postoperative follow-up. Demographic (age, gender, body mass index [BMI], comorbidities, and diagnoses), surgical data (operative time, blood loss, hospital stay, intraoperative complications), patient-reported outcomes (PROs) (visual analogue scale [VAS] back pain and disability (Oswestry disability index [ODI]), and radiographic data were collected.
resultsIn total, 42 patients were included, with an average age of 53.6 years and a BMI of 28 kg/m². Surgical data showed the mean total operative time was 98.8 minutes, and the mean blood loss was 17.1 mL with no intraoperative complications. At three-month follow-up, all mean PROs showed statistically significant improvement (p<0.05) when compared with baseline. VAS back pain improved from 7.5 (standard deviation (stdev) 7.5±0.7) preoperatively to 3.0 (stdev 1.0) at three months postoperative, while ODI improved from 58.7 (stdev 7.2) to 26.3 (stdev 10.3) at the same time points. Radiographic data showed that using robotic assistance for planning and placing cortical screws yielded high accuracy, as evidenced by a mean tip deviation of 1.2 mm (stdev 0.6 mm), mean tail deviation of 1.1 mm (stdev 0.4 mm) and a mean angular offset of 1.4 mm (stdev 0.7). Two (4.8%) patients had postoperative complications at three-month follow-up, including a wound infection and one report of wound dehiscence.
conclusionMIDLIF is an efficient, reproducible surgical procedure with a low complication rate that resulted in significant improvements in early PROs. Robotic assistance for planning and placing cortical screws in MIDLIF was highly accurate. These initial findings suggest that using robotic assistance adds value to MIDLIF procedures and is a viable alternative to traditional posterior fusion procedures.
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.