Patients who were workers’ compensation claimants had a lower rate of returning to work after spinal surgery compared to patients not receiving workers’ comp benefits, according to a meta-analysis published this month in The Spine Journal.
The study, whose lead author was Dr. Thomas Cheriyan of the New York Langone Medical Center, analyzed 31 past studies that included a total of 3,567 patients. Thirteen of the studies were prospective and 18 were retrospective. Decompression alone was examined in 12 studies; the remainder looked at fusion.
The analysis found that workers’ ...
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