LAUSR

Study Design: A meta-analysis of early surgery for acute thoracolumbar spinal cord injury. Objective: To evaluate whether early surgery increases the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) grade of patients confronted with acute thoracolumbar spinal cord injury. Summary of Background Data: The idea that early surgery aids the recovery of spinal cord function in patients confronted with acute thoracolumbar spinal cord injury is controversial. Methods: All articles were retrieved from the PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Scopus databases, which were searched from onset until 1 May 2021. All data are presented as odds ratios (ORs) and mean deviations (MDs) with 95% confidential intervals (CIs). Results: Ten studies, including 6 prospective studies, 3 retrospective studies, and 1 randomized controlled trial, containing 952 patients, were included in the analysis. The results showed that early surgery significantly reduced the number of patients with ASIA grade A (OR 0.27, 95% CI: 0.13–0.58, P<0.01) and B (OR 0.56, 95% CI: 0.39–0.82, P<0.01) status but greatly increased the number of patients with grade E status (OR 1.44, 95% CI: 1.06–1.96, P<0.01). Generally, the patients receiving early surgery achieved >1 ASIA grade improvement (OR 1.70, 95% CI: 1.31–2.21, P<0.01) or >2 ASIA grade (OR 3.55, 95% CI: 2.20–5.70, P<0.01) improvements. Although early surgery did not reduce the incidence of operative complications (OR 0.72, 95% CI: 0.45–1.16, P<0.01), the duration of hospitalization was greatly shortened (MD−3.48, 95% CI: −0.45 to−2.91, P<0.01). Conclusions: The spinal cord function of acute thoracolumbar spinal cord injury patients can benefit from early decompression. This conclusion should be further verified with randomized controlled trials.