Low-Back Outcome Scale and the Oswestry Disability Index They Reflective of Patient Satisfaction

Abstract

Background: Low back pain is the most common type of pain. The causes of many painful conditions of the low back remain obscure. Low back pain bothers not only patients but also the experts about its multidisciplinary approaches. The typical background of a low back incidence is a faulty postural pattern. A mechanical or functional strain causing muscular misbalance in one part of the body may soon result in compensatory changes in other parts. The Low-Back Outcome Scale (LBOS) of Greenough and Fraser and the Oswestry disability index (ODI) were compared to the patient satisfaction index (PSI) in lumbar disc herniation (LDH) surgery.  

Methods: This prospective interventional study was conducted in department of Orthopaedic Surgery, BSMMU, Dhaka from October 2017 to September 2019. A total of 22 patients who underwent discectomy were followed through assessment of preand post-surgical satisfaction by the PSI, the LBOS, and the ODI. The LBOS were rated as satisfied if the outcomes were excellent or good and as dissatisfied if fair and poor. Considering the ODI, clinically satisfied was defined as a 13-point improvement from the baseline ODI scores. Phi (?) correlation analysis was used to study the correlation among the PSI, the LBOS and the ODI scores as proxy for patients’ satisfaction.  

Results: In this study, out of 22 patients 8 (36.4%) were 35-45 years of age, 8 (36.4%) were 46- 55years, 4 (18.2%) were 56-65 years and 2 (9.1%) were 66-70 years old. The mean (± SD) age of the patients was 51.1±9.7 years and the youngest and the oldest patients were 35 and 70 years respectively. Among 22 subjects, majority of the study subjects 15 (68.2%) were male and only 7 (31.8%) were female.  Significant improvement from the pre- to post-operative ODI scores was observed. Post-surgical satisfaction based on the PSI, the ODI, and the LBOS were 72.7%, 68.1%, and 81.1%, respectively. Regarding patient satisfaction, there were weak associations between LBOS vs. PSI and ODI vs. PSI (?=?0.054, P=0.533) and (?=?0.129, P=0.136), respectively.  

Conclusions: Our study showed that the ODI and the LBOS were not reflective of patients’ satisfaction after discectomy.