Improvement in Patient Mental Well-being After Surgery for Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy

Retrospective cohort study.

The aim of this study was to investigate changes in mental well-being after surgery for cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) and identify factors associated with improvement.

Posterior cervical surgery with laminoplasty significantly improves myelopathy and physical function in patients with CSM. However, its impact on mental well-being is unclear.

Patients who underwent laminoplasty for CSM and had >2 years of follow-up were reviewed (n = 111). The mental component summary (MCS) score was used as a measure of mental well-being. The trend in MCS score change was evaluated using the Jonckheere-Terpstra trend test. Preoperative clinical scores were compared between patients with improvements greater and less than the minimal clinically important difference (MCID). Significant variables were included in a multinomial logistic regression analysis and further validated in a receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Additionally, the results were confirmed in a long-term observation cohort of patients followed up for >5 years (n = 46).

The improvement in the average MCS score (5.6) was greater than the MCID (4.0). The trend of improvement was sustained for 2 years (P = 0.002), but not for 5 years (P = 0.130). In terms of individual cases, 56 patients (50.5%) achieved MCS score improvement greater than the MCID. These patients showed significantly lower preoperative MCS scores than those without meaningful improvement (P < 0.001). The preoperative "social functioning (SF)" score was independently associated with MCS score improvement (P = 0.001). ROC curve analysis validated the ability of preoperative SF to predict MCS score improvement at 2 and 5 years postoperatively (area under the curve: 0.744, 0.893, respectively).

Half of the patients achieved meaningful improvement in mental well-being. A lower preoperative SF score was independently associated with improvement. These results may help identify patients who could experience an improvement in mental well-being after surgery and develop novel approaches to achieve further improvement.

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