Surgical Results after Soft Graf Stabilization in Lumbar Degenerative Disc Disease

Abstract

The authors report our clinical experience and surgical results with soft Graf stabilization system in a series of 47 cases with lumbar degenerative disc disease. The aim is to determine the usefulness of a soft stabilization system associated to clinical and radiological results of this patient series. At a mean period of postoperative observation of 32.5 months, excellent, good, fair and poor results were obtained in 9 (19%), 25 (53%), 9 (19%) and 4 (9%) of the patients, respectively. The height of disc space at that level increased from 8.2mm to 9.0mm in L3-4, 8.8mm to 9.9mm on L4-5 and 9.3mm to 10.4mm on L5-S1. Regional as well as global lumbar lordosis were maintained. Angulation instability was changed from-4.5' to 4' on L3-4, -6.2' to 4.8' on L4-5 and -2.2' to 9.8' on L5-S1. Translational instability was corrected from 14.5% to 12.3% on L3-4, 17.5% to 13.1% on L4-5 and 20.8% to 18.6% on L5-S1. These results suggest that soft Graf stabilization system in lumbar degenerative disc disease would be effective and useful alternative treatment method.