BACKGROUND: In posterior decompression for lumbar spinal stenosis, preservation of the posterior elements appears to provide patients with long-term favorable outcomes. To confirm this assumption, we evaluated the impact of spinous process integrity, i.e., osseous continuity between the spinous process and the lamina, on short to long-term outcomes.
METHODS: As a model for the study of spinous process integrity, we retrospectively reviewed the cases of forty-eight patients who underwent open-door laminoplasty using a spinous process-splitting approach without disrupting attachment sites of the multifidus muscle. In those patients, thirty-nine of the 103 spinous processes achieved spontaneous osseous union with the laminar flap, while the others did not achieve osseous union.
