Effectiveness of Corticosteroid Therapy in Enhancing Early Postoperative Recovery in Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Patients: A Retrospective Study.

BACKGROUND The degree of postoperative symptom improvement in patients with lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is crucial to their postoperative rehabilitation process and functional exercise. Corticosteroids have certain anti-inflammatory effects. This study aimed to explore whether small doses of corticosteroids would improve postoperative neurological symptoms in patients with lumbar spinal stenosis. MATERIAL AND METHODS Patients with lumbar spinal stenosis who underwent open surgery were divided into a corticosteroid therapy group (CTG) and a non-corticosteroid therapy group (NCTG). They were followed up for 24 months after surgery. The numeric rating scale (NRS) for leg pain (NRS-LP) and leg numbness (NRS-LN), Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) scores, and Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) scores of the 2 groups were compared at different time points to evaluate the therapeutic effect. RESULTS Of the 232 eligible patients enrolled, 128 received corticosteroids and 104 did not. At the 1-month postoperative follow-up, patients in the CTG had significantly lower NRS-LP and NRS-LN scores than those in the NCTG (P=0.017; P=0.043). At the 3-month follow-up, the NRS-LP and ODI scores of patients in the CTG were significantly lower than those of the NCTG (P=0.015; P=0.027), and SF-36 scores were significantly higher than that of the NCTG (P=0.012). At the 6-month follow-up, the SF-36 scores of patients in the CTG was significantly higher than that of the NCTG (P=0.008). CONCLUSIONS Small doses of corticosteroid therapy for postoperative lumbar spinal stenosis reduced symptoms and improved quality of life scores after surgery. However, it had little long-term impact on final patient outcomes.

Artificial Intelligence in Scoliosis: Current Applications and Future Directions.

Scoliosis is a three-dimensional deformity of lateral bending and rotation of the spine. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a set of theories and techniques for studying artificial intelligence, which realizes machine intelligence by simulating and expanding human intelligence. With the continuous development of the multidisciplinary integration trend of modern medicine, artificial intelligence is used more and more in the diagnosis and treatment of scoliosis. Artificial intelligence has been widely used in the study of scoliosis and has penetrated into all fields of clinical practice of scoliosis. At present, artificial intelligence has shown good application prospects in early screening, diagnosis, treatment decision making, intraoperative operation, and prognosis prediction of scoliosis. This paper mainly summarizes the application of artificial intelligence in the clinical practice of scoliosis, and briefly introduces the AI model and its specific applications. In addition, this paper also discusses the limitations and future development of artificial intelligence. In the future, artificial intelligence will bring greater convenience to the diagnosis and treatment of scoliosis and provide better therapeutic effects for patients.