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Updated: Jul 6, 2025
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Evaluation of Patients' Posture and Gait Profile After Lumbar Fusion Surgery by Video Rasterstereography and Treadmill Gait Analysis
Published on: March 23, 2019
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Determining Differences in Perioperative Functional Mobility Patterns in Lumbar Decompression Versus Fusion Patients
Daksh Chauhan1, Hasan S Ahmad1, Ali Hamade1
1Department of Neurosurgery, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Neurosurgery
|January 3, 2024
Summary
Lumbar fusion (LF) patients show greater preoperative declines and slower postoperative recovery compared to lumbar decompression (LD) patients, as indicated by daily step count changes. This highlights distinct mobility patterns after spinal surgery.
Area of Science:
- Spine surgery outcomes
- Digital health monitoring
- Patient mobility assessment
Background:
- Smartphone accelerometry offers high-fidelity data for assessing patient mobility post-surgery.
- Big data from smartphones enables advanced analysis for patient well-being insights.
- Comparing functional activity changes can reveal differences in preoperative and postoperative courses.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the rate of change in functional activity data between lumbar fusion (LF) and lumbar decompression (LD) patients.
- To identify distinct preoperative and postoperative mobility trajectories for LF and LD cohorts.
- To evaluate the utility of smartphone activity data in understanding surgical outcomes.
Main Methods:
- Retrospective analysis of 23 LF and 18 LD patients.
- Utilized Apple Health step count data (over 70,000 data points) across 6 perioperative epochs.
- Calculated the daily rate of change in step counts for each patient and epoch.
Main Results:
- Lumbar fusion patients exhibited steeper preoperative declines (P = .045).
- Lumbar fusion patients showed slower surgical recovery (P = .041) and steeper secondary declines (P = .010).
- Perioperative trajectories varied and were not explained by age, comorbidities, or surgical levels.
Conclusions:
- Lumbar fusion and lumbar decompression patients display distinct perioperative activity profiles based on daily step count changes.
- The rate of change in daily steps is a valuable metric for patient phenotyping and predicting postsurgical outcomes.
- Prospective studies are recommended to establish causal links and expand on these findings.
