Purpose: Lumbar spinal stenosis is the most common indication for spine surgery in the elderly. XStop IPD is an attractive alternative to traditional laminectomy or laminectomy with fusion as it avoids a longer procedure and anaesthesia with significantly less blood loss. The purpose of this study is to prospectively evaluate clinical outcomes, complications and functional evaluation of symptom severity, physical function and patient satisfaction following XStop IPD procedure

Method: Preoperative and postoperative clinical data as well as SF 36, visual analog scale and Roland Morris questionnaire data collected on 16 consecutive patients over 60 years undergoing XStop IPD at L3-4 and L4-5 levels or both levels. All patients had symptomatic lumbar spine stenosis with intermittent neurogenic claudication. Evaluations were made pre-operatively and post-operatively at 3, 6, 12 and 24 months. All patients had clinical radiographic data as well as data on visual analog scale SF 36 and the Roland Morris back questionnaire.

Results: Patients ages ranged from 58 to 86 years with an average age of 74.25 years. In 75 percent of patients there were two or more significant co-morbidities with 18.75 percent requiring 2 level surgery. Four of the 16 patients had lumbar degenerative scoliosis with cobb angle less than 25 degrees. 50.25% the patients had grade I spondylolisthesis. No patient had previous spine surgery. In 31.25 percent of patients there was a history of diabetes. BMI ranged from 20 to 40. Seventy five percent of patients were discharged home within 24 hours. Ninety percent of patients reported relief of their leg pain at their first follow up visit within two weeks of the surgery. There were no significant complications. One-year follow up in six patients demonstrated improvements in VAS, Roland Morris criteria and SF 36 while the remaining patients have up to nine months of follow-up clinical data.

Conclusion: We present our early results of this prospective study. There were significant improvements in functional outcomes. We therefore recommend the use of XStop IPD for elderly patients with multiple co-morbidities suffering from symptomatic lumbar spine stenosis with neurogenic claudication.