Comparison of Decompression Alone and Decompression Combined with Fusion for Treating Lumbar Degenerative Spondylolisthesis

Abstract Background To assess the necessity or not of the addition of fusion to decompression for lumber degenerative spondylolisthesis patients.Method Potential publications were selected from PubMed, Web of Science and Cochrane Library. Gray relevant studies were manually searched. We set the searching time spanning from the creating date of electronic engines to August 2019. STATA version 11.0 was exerted to process the pooled data.Results Six RCTs were selected in our analysis. A total of 650 participants were divided into 275 in the decompression group and 375 in the fusion group. Our meta-analysis showed negative results generally. No statistic differences were found in VAS score for low back pain (WMD, -0.045; 95%CI, -1.259 to 1.169; P=0.942) and leg pain (WMD, 0.075; 95% CI, -1.201 to 1.35; P=0.908), ODI score (WMD, 1.489; 95% CI, -7.232 to 10.211; P=0.738), EQ-5D score (WMD, 0.03; 95% CI, -0.05 to 0.12; P=0.43), Odom’s classification (OR, 0.353; 95%CI 0.113, 1.099; P=0.072), postoperative complications (OR, 0.437; 95% CI, 0.065 to 2.949; P=0.395), secondary operation (OR, 2.541; 95% CI 0.897, 7.198; P=0.079) and postoperative degenerative spondylolisthesis (OR=8.59,P=0.27). Subgroup analysis in VAS score on low back pain (OR=0.77, 95% CI, 0.36 to 1.65; P=0.50) was demonstrated as no meaning as well.Conclusion The overall efficacy of the combination of decompression and fusion is not found to be superior to decompression alone. At the same time, more evidence-based performance is needed to supplement this opinion.