The Safety Profile of Percutaneous Minimally Invasive Sacroiliac Joint Fusion

STUDY DESIGN: Literature review. OBJECTIVES: Systematic review of the existing literature to determine the safety of minimally invasive (MI) sacroiliac (SI) joint fusion through the determination of the rate of procedural and device-related intraoperative and postoperative complications. METHODS: All original studies with reported complication rates were included for analysis. Complications were defined as procedural if secondary to the MI surgery and device related if caused by placement of the implant. Complication rates are reported using descriptive statistics. Random-effects meta-analysis was performed for preoperative and postoperative Visual Analog Score (VAS) pain ratings and Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) scores. RESULTS: Fourteen studies of 720 patients (499 females/221 males) with a mean follow-up of 22 months were included. Ninety-nine patients (13.75%) underwent bilateral SI joint arthrodesis resulting in a total of 819 SI joints fused. There were 91 reported procedural-related complications (11.11%) with the most common adverse event being surgical wound infection/drainage (n = 17). Twenty-five adverse events were attributed to be secondary to placement of the implant (3.05%) with nerve root impingement (n = 13) being the most common. The revision rate was 2.56%. MI SI joint fusion reduced VAS scores from 82.42 (95% confidence interval [CI] 79.34-85.51) to 29.03 (95% CI 25.05-33.01) and ODI scores from 57.44 (95% CI 54.73-60.14) to 29.42 (95% CI 20.62-38.21). CONCLUSIONS: MI SI joint fusion is a relatively safe procedure but is not without certain risks. Further work must be done to optimize the procedure’s complication profile. Possible areas of improvement include preoperative patient optimization, operative technique, and use of intraoperative real-time imaging.