Trial reportClinical interventions in aging2026
Percutaneous Endoscopic Decompression versus Non-Operative Care for Radicular Pain in the Oldest-Old with Lumbar Stenosis: A Target Trial Emulation Focusing on Pain Relief and Deprescribing.
Trial report in Clinical interventions in aging, 2026. 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
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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.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: To emulate a target trial comparing percutaneous transforaminal endoscopic decompression (PTED) versus non-operative care for older patients with unilateral radicular pain due to lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS), focusing on comprehensive treatment failure and deprescribing. Design: Retrospective cohort study using a Target Trial Emulation Framework. Setting: Single academic spine center. Participants: 143 consecutive patients aged ≥80 years with unilateral radicular symptoms and imaging-confirmed LSS (February 2022-October 2024). All underwent confirmatory diagnostic nerve root block. Interventions: PTED under local anesthesia (n=75) versus structured non-operative care (n=68). Main Outcome Measures: Primary outcome was 90-day comprehensive treatment failure (unplanned rehospitalization or treatment escalation due to uncontrolled pain or serious complication). Secondary outcomes were Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) and polypharmacy at 12 months. Results: PTED group had significantly lower primary outcome incidence (16.0% vs 44.1%). After multivariable adjustment and inverse probability weighting, PTED was associated with markedly lower odds of comprehensive treatment failure (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0.18, 95% CI 0.07-0.47), primarily driven by pain-related failure (aOR 0.06; number needed to treat = 3.7). Complication-related failure did not differ significantly between groups, yielding a favorable benefit-risk ratio of 6.6:1. Subgroup analyses confirmed treatment effect consistency across key patient characteristics. At 12 months, PTED patients demonstrated greater ODI improvement (adjusted difference -8.92 points) and significantly lower polypharmacy prevalence (aOR 0.14), indicating sustained "deprescribing" benefit. Conclusion: In this emulated target trial, PTED was associated with reduced 90-day treatment failure and benefits at 12 months in pain relief and polypharmacy reduction among carefully selected oldest-old patients with LSS. These findings support PTED's potential in this population and justify the need for a prospective randomized trial.
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