The trend of clinical and pathological characteristics and surgical treatment in patients with spinal metastases: A multicenter retrospective study / 中华骨科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To retrospectively analyze the patients with spinal metastases who received surgical intervention and summarize the evolution of their clinical and pathological characteristics and surgical methods.Methods:The data of 703 patients with spinal metastases from January 2007 to December 2018 were collected retrospectively. There were 395 males (56.19%, 395/703) and 308 females (43.81%, 308/703) with an average age of 58.14±11.46 years (range 13-84 years). According to the degree of invasion and thoroughness of tumor resection, the surgical methods could be divided into minimally invasive surgery, decompression surgery, separation surgery, piecemeal resection and total en-bloc spondylectomy surgery. The operative methods were minimally invasive surgery in 89 cases (12.66%), decompression surgery in 96 cases (13.66%), separation surgery in 303 cases (43.10%), piecemeal resection in 182 cases (25.89%) and total en-bloc spondylectomy in 33 cases (4.69%). To analyze the trend of the clinical, pathological types and surgical treatment of patients with spinal metastases over the years, and determine the relevant factors affecting the decision-making of surgical methods by multivariate logistic regression.Results:The ratio of male to female was 1.281. 39.54% (278/703) of patients with single-segment involvement in 703 patients, 24.04% (169/703) of patients with double-segment metastasis and 36.42% (256/703) of patients with multi-segment metastasis. The most common type of primary tumor was lung cancer (34.57%, 243/703), followed by breast cancer (8.25%, 58/703), myeloma (8.11%, 57/703), gastrointestinal tumor (6.82%, 48/703) and renal malignant tumor (6.40%, 45/703). From 2007 to 2018, there was no significant difference in the percentage change of different age, gender and primary tumor source composition (age χ 2=14.01, P=0.233; gender χ 2=35.73, P=0.341; primary tumor χ 2=120.09, P=0.074). The percentage of patients with sacrococcygeal metastasis decreased from 20.00% in 2008 to 1.89% in 2017 and the difference was statistically significant (χ 2=8.09, P=0.005). The percentage of patients with multi-level metastasis increased from 26.67% in 2008 to 52.83% in 2017, and the difference was statistically significant (χ 2=7.23, P=0.007). The percentage of patients with minimally invasive surgery decreased from 25.00% in 2007 to 5.88% in 2018, and the percentage of patients with segmented resection decreased from 53.33% in 2008 to 10.29% in 2018. The proportion of the two surgical methods showed a significant downward trend, and the differences were statistically significant (minimally invasive surgery χ 2=1.46, P=0.026; segmented resection surgery χ 2=19.56, P<0.001). The percentage of patients undergoing separation surgery increased from 13.33% in 2008 to 64.71% in 2018, and the proportion of patients undergoing total en-bloc spondylectomy increased from 0 in 2007 to 10.29% in 2018. Both surgical methods showed a significant growth trend and the differences were statistically significant (separation surgery χ 2=27.09, P<0.001; χ 2=4.16, P=0.042). Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that age, metastatic site, number of metastatic segments, pathological vertebral fractures, Frankel grade, SINS score and VAS score were independent factors influencing surgical decision-making ( P<0.05). Conclusion:With different time and age, the invasiveness and thoroughness of surgery are increasing, which shows that the percentage of patients who underwent separation surgery and to-tal en-bloc spondylectomy is significantly increasing. Age, metastatic site, number of metastatic segments, pathological vertebral fractures, Frankel grade, SINS score and VAS score are independent factors affecting surgical decision-making.