Comparison between Results of Microdiscectomy and Open Discectomy in Management of High-Level Lumbar Disc Prolapse

AIM: This work aims to compare between results of microdiscectomy and open discectomy in management of high-level lumbar disc prolapse. METHODS: This is a controlled randomised study, where patients having upper lumbar disc herniations were evaluated preoperatively both clinically and radiologically, randomisation was planned to perform open discectomy in odd number patients and to perform microdiscectomy in even number patients, patients were evaluated and followed up for deficits and outcomes. RESULTS: We operated ten patients in this study, five cases were operated upon with microdiscectomy, and five cases were operated upon with open discectomy, the median age of presentation in this study was 44 years, there were five males and five females, postoperative pain improvement was better in microdiscectomy. Hospital stay, blood loss, bone loss and postoperative complications were less in microdiscectomy. CONCLUSION: Microdiscectomy allows good surgical visualisation and is less traumatic to the involved tissues. The results of this study indicated that microsurgery reduces hospitalisation time, improves the overall surgery-related outcome. The main differences between the two procedures were the length of the incision and blood loss. We found that lumbar microdiscectomy allows patients earlier return to work and normal life with less reliance on postoperative narcotic analgesic agents.