Study Finds Predictors for Spinal Surgery Complications

Researchers at the University of Rochester have developed a model for predicting the chance of complications in spinal surgery, looking at 20 different factors associated with complications. The research article by Dr. Kristopher Kimmel and colleagues appears in the December edition of the medical journal Spine. The researchers looked at 22,430 spinal surgeries from the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Project database. They found an overall complication rate for the surgeries of 9.9%. The most common complications were postoperative bleeding requiring trans...