Introduction: Spine Surgery in Octogenarians: Quality improvement and review of 282 patients
Methods: We gathered a total of 6,988 surgical case records, of these 282 patients over 80 years of age were separated into an ‘octogenarian’ cohort for retrospective analysis. Pre surgery factors, post-surgery complications,
length of stay were all analyzed with various methods of analysis including using either Chi-square or Fisher’s exact tests, Logistic regression , and Wilcoxon Rank Sum
Results: Preoperative factors differed strongly between the octogenarian and control groups. CHF (1.4% to 5%), cardiac arrhythmias (5.3% to 15.6%) and osteoporosis (6.6% to 18.1%) were all more common among octogenarians while obesity (10.4% to 4.6%) was more common among the controls. In the logistic regression analysis, the pre-operative presence of cardiac arrhythmias and osteoporosis were highly significant in predicting overall complications, 30-day mortality and long LOS. Obesity was significant in predicting overall complications and 30-day mortality and inpatient class was significant in predicting overall complications
Conclusions: Being an octogenarian in itself was not significant in any of the models, suggesting that the gathered pre-operative factors may be sufficient to explain the variability in overall outcomes
Patient Care: Better selection, evaluation, and choice of which octogenarians could undergo spine surgery
Learning Objectives: *Examine the rate of complication and adverse effects in our octogenarian population
*Add to sparse literature regarding outcomes of octogenarians undergoing spine surgery
*Provide data to clinicians regarding outcome to help weigh risk and benefits of surgery in this population