Decompression surgery is the most common surgical treatment for lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS). Relatively low satisfaction rate was reported. Patients often complaint of residual numbness despite significant pain relief. We hypothesized that numbness had a significant impact on patient satisfaction, but had not been evaluated, which is associated with low satisfaction rate. This study aimed to examine how much numbness is associated with patient satisfaction.

We retrospectively reviewed prospectively collected data from consecutive patients who underwent decompression without fusion for LSS. We evaluated the Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) scores of low back pain (LBP), leg pain, and leg numbness preoperatively and at the final follow-up visit. Improvement was evaluated using minimum clinically important differences (MCIDs). Patient satisfaction was evaluated using the question, “How satisfied are you with the overall result of your back operation?”. There are four possible answers consisting of “very satisfied (4-point)”, “somewhat satisfied (3-point)”, “somewhat dissatisfied (2-point)”, or “very dissatisfied (1-point)”. Spearman correlation was used to evaluate the association between patient satisfaction and reaching MCIDs.

A total of 116 patients were included. All three components had correlation with patient satisfaction with the correlation efficient of 0.30 in LBP, 0.22 in leg pain, and 0.33 in numbness. Numbness had greatest correlation efficient value.

We showed that numbness has a greater impact than leg/back pain on patient satisfaction in patients undergoing decompression for LSS. We suggest not only LBP and leg pain but also numbness should be evaluated pre- and postoperatively.

减压手术是腰椎管狭窄症 (LSS) 最常见的手术治疗方法。报告的满意度相对较低。尽管疼痛明显减轻，患者仍常抱怨残留的麻木感。我们假设麻木对患者满意度有显着影响，但尚未评估，这与低满意度有关。本研究旨在检查麻木程度与患者满意度的相关性。

我们回顾性地回顾了从接受减压但未融合 LSS 的连续患者中前瞻性收集的数据。我们在术前和最后一次随访时评估了腰痛 (LBP)、腿部疼痛和腿部麻木的数字评定量表 (NRS) 评分。使用最小临床重要差异 (MCID) 评估改善情况。使用问题评估患者满意度，“您对背部手术的总体结果是否满意？”。有四种可能的答案，包括“非常满意（4 分）”、“有些满意（3 分）”、“有些不满意（2 分）”或“非常不满意（1 分）”。Spearman 相关性用于评估患者满意度与达到 MCID 之间的关联。

共纳入 116 名患者。所有三个分量都与患者满意度相关，LBP 相关系数为 0.30，腿痛相关系数为 0.22，麻木相关系数为 0.33。麻木有最大的相关有效值。

我们发现，在 LSS 减压患者中，麻木对患者满意度的影响大于腿部/背部疼痛。我们建议不仅应在术前和术后评估 LBP 和腿痛，还应评估麻木。