[Effectiveness of conservative and surgical treatment of lumboischiadic syndrome]

Hitherto performed retrospective studies of conservative and surgical treatment of compressive radicular lumboischiadic syndrome did not provide a clear answer to the question which procedure cures the disease more effectively. The reason is that severe types of the disease treated by surgery were compared with therapeutic results of milder forms treated conservatively. The authors compared therefore the effectiveness of both therapeutic procedures in a prospective study with a random selection of patients as regards the therapeutic procedure.

In two groups--first group comprising 100 patients with the global syndrome and second group comprising 64 patients with the pure syndrome--the authors enlisted the patients by random selection for conservative or surgical treatment. Early results were assessed three months after treatment. Satisfactory results (cure) were achieved in 50% of the operated patients with the global syndrome, compared with 23.81% treated conservatively (p < 0.01), and improvement was recorded in 77.77% operated patients as compared with 58.69% conservatively treated patients (p < 0.05). In the group with the pure syndrome satisfactory results were achieved in 68.75% operated patients as compared with 21.87% conservatively treated patients (p < 0.001) and improvement in 81.25% patients as compared with 53.12% conservatively treated patients (p < 0.01).

The investigation proved a statistically significantly greater effectiveness of the surgical method of treatment of compressive radicular lumboischiadic syndrome as compared with conservative treatment. The second finding was that both methods have a relatively low effectiveness as regards, complete recovery. It is necessary to seek methods to increase the effectiveness of both therapeutic procedures, in particular clearly more effective surgical treatment.