Patient enrollment
This study retrospectively examined 511 hip joints of 265 patients (190 hips of 95 men and 321 hips of 170 women) who had undergone primary lumbar fusion between May 2010 and May 2020. All procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board of Tokai University Hospital (21R-043). Inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) patients aged over 50 years who had undergone a lumbar fusion surgery; (2) patients who had their whole-spine standing X-ray evaluated before and after surgeries; and (3) patients with a follow-up period of over 1 year. Exclusion criteria were as follows: (1) patients who had undergone a previous hip surgery; (2) patients with connective tissue disease; (3) patients who had no hip joint space during patient recruitment; (4) patients without whole-spine standing X-ray; and (5) patients with no follow-up data. Baseline parameters of the patients included in this study are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Demographic data
Demographics
|
All patients (n=261)
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Age (years, mean ± SD)
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71.1±7.9
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Sex (male:female)
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95 : 170
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Body mass index (mean ± SD)
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23.4±3.8
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Follow-up duration (years, mean ± SD)
|
2.9±1.7
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Sacral fusion (frequency/total number of hips)
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168/511
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Number of lumbar fusion levels (mean ± SD)
|
4.2±4.3
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Joint space narrowing (mm/year, mean ± SD)
|
0.12±0.2
|
SD, standard deviation
Surgical indication for spine fusion
Spine fusion was performed for patients with foraminal stenosis, segmental instability, or global sagittal malalignment. Short fusion (one to two fixations) was performed to decompress foraminal stenosis or correct segmental instability. Long fusion was performed to correct global sagittal malalignment.
Radiographic evaluation
Radiographic evaluations were performed both preoperatively and more than 1 year after surgery. Sagittal alignment was assessed using whole-spine X-rays in which patients stood relaxed at a shoulder-width stance looking straight ahead, with elbows bent and knuckles placed in the bilateral supraclavicular fossae [24]. The following parameters were evaluated as spinal parameters: sagittal vertical axis (SVA), thoracic kyphosis (TK), lumbar lordosis (LL), pelvic incidence (PI), pelvic tilt (PT), and sacral slope (SS) (Figure 1) [25,26]. The number of lumbar fusion levels and the presence or absence of sacral fusion were also recorded. The following hip parameters were measured: the center-edge (CE) angle [27] and minimum joint width (MJW) of the hip (Figure 2). The joint width was measured in 0.1-mm increments and the narrowest space between the acetabulum and femoral head was recorded as the MJW. Postoperative joint space was measured at the same point as that of the preoperative measurement. The MJW was standardized by dividing the decreased width by the follow-up years (mm/year). Considering that Conrozier reported the hip joint space narrowing to be 0.43 mm/year before THA [28], we defined hip OA progression as hip joint space narrowing of ≥0.4 mm/year and divided the patients into non-progression and OA-progression groups.
All measurements were performed using a picture archiving and communication system (Techmatrix Corporation, Tokyo, Japan). All radiological assessments were performed by a single orthopedic surgeon, and two other orthopedic surgeons evaluated 80 randomly selected radiographs. Intraclass reliability of the radiographic evaluation parameters was as follows: SVA, 0.96; TK, 0.8; LL, 0.82; PI, 0.85; PT, 0.94; SS, 0.87; CE angle, 0.63; and MJW, 0.73.
Statistical analysis
A power analysis was performed using G-Power software (ver. 3.1.9.2, Germany) to calculate the minimum sample size necessary to perform linear multiple regression (effect size = 0.15, alpha = 0.05, power = 0.95, number of predictors = 13), which indicated a required sample size of 189 samples.
Multiple regression analyses were performed to identify the independent predictors of hip joint space narrowing. Independent variables that were included in the multiple regression analysis are as follows: age, sex, body mass index, CE angle, postoperative SVA, postoperative TK, postoperative LL, postoperative PI, postoperative PT, postoperative SS, the number of lumbar fusion levels, sacral fusion, and follow-up duration. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was performed to compare preoperative SVA, TK, LL, PI, PT, and SS with their postoperative values. The Mann–Whitney U test was performed to compare the parameters of the non-progression and OA-progression groups along with the parameters of patients who had undergone four or more levels of lumbar fusion against those who had undergone up to three levels of fusion. A P value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Analyses were performed using the SPSS software (version 26, IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA).