Dear Editor,
We read an article published in the April, 2020 issue of your journal by Yang JH, et al. titled “Safety and effectiveness of minimally invasive scoliosis surgery for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: a retroactive series of 84 patients” and analyzed it in detail [1].
We appreciate the authors' efforts in sharing their experience of minimally invasive scoliosis surgery in a relatively large number (84) of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis patients, which is the study with the largest number of AIS patients for MISS till date available in the literature as we noticed [1].
After analyzing the article, we like to raise some important points with the study and seek clarification for the same:
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1.
Though the authors have done a fantastic effort in publishing their work with largest patient data in the present study, we question the authors for not opting a better conducted comparative or controlled study design with longer follow-up between open and MIS scoliosis correction for AIS, as the author has published similar retrospective article in 2016 on MISS in AIS patients and also had vast experience in open surgery for AIS in the past for more than a decade [2].
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2.
As they quoted in the methodology, all the patients had a minimum of 1-year follow-up. They did not state the duration of actual or the final follow-up. If the final follow-up is of 1-year duration, we question the author’s decision for restricting the follow-up for shorter duration as they had similar study with 2-year follow-up previously [2]. At the least, they could have assessed longer duration follow-up patients in a sub-group analysis.
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3.
Author had raised concern of increased radiation exposure in doing MISS for deformity correction in AIS in the previous study [2]. This issue is not addressed in the present study also. Radiation exposure of the cases needs to be mentioned.
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4.
Authors did not mention any incidence of conversion of MISS to open surgery due to any reason.
References
Yang JH, Chang D-G, Suh SW, Damani N, Lee H-N, Lim J et al (2020) Safety and effectiveness of minimally invasive scoliosis surgery for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: a retrospective case series of 84 patients. Eur Spine J 29:761–769. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-019-06172-1
Yang JH, Chang D-G, Honnurappa AR, Kim S, Chang HH, Suh SW (2016) Minimally invasive surgery for correcting adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: a novel approach called coin hole technique. J Adv Spine Surg 6(1):20–28
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Kumar, S., Shetty, A. & Rathod, P. Letter to the Editor concerning “Safety and effectiveness of minimally invasive scoliosis surgery for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: a retrospective case series of 84 patients” by Yang JH, et al. (Eur Spine J; [2020] 29:761–769). Eur Spine J 30, 1791 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-020-06487-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-020-06487-4