Meeting Patient Expectations or Achieving a Minimum Clinically Important Difference: Predictors of Satisfaction among Lumbar Fusion Patients

STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective cohort. PURPOSE: To investigate the impact of meeting a patient’s preoperative expectations for back or leg pain or the achievement of minimum clinically important difference (MCID) on patient satisfaction following lumbar fusion. OVERVIEW OF LITERATURE: Few studies have compared if MCID achievement or meeting preoperative expectations for pain reduction affects patient satisfaction. METHODS: A surgical database was reviewed for eligible patients who underwent lumbar fusion. Patient satisfaction and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) for back and leg pain were the outcomes of interest. Meeting expectations was calculated as a difference of ≤0 between preoperative expectations and postoperative VAS scores. MCID achievement was calculated by comparing changes in VAS scores with established values. Meeting preoperative expectations or MCID achievement as predictors of patient satisfaction was evaluated using regression analysis. RESULTS: A total of 134 patients were included in this study. Patients demonstrated significant improvements in VAS back and VAS leg (p<0.001). At 1 year, 56.4% of patients had their VAS back expectations met compared with 59.5% for VAS leg. Similarly, at 1 year, 77.3% and 71.3% of patients achieved MCID for VAS back and leg, respectively. Meeting expectations for VAS back was significantly associated with patient satisfaction at all postoperative timepoints; however, MCID achievement only demonstrated a significant association with patient satisfaction at 6 and 12 weeks (all, p≤0.024). Meeting VAS leg expectations and MCID achievement both demonstrated a significant association with patient satisfaction at all postoperative timepoints (all, p≤0.02). No differences between MCID achievement and meeting expectations as predictors of satisfaction were noted. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of patients achieved MCID and had their back and leg pain expectations met by 1 year. Both measures were significant predictors of patient satisfaction and suggest that MCID achievement may act as a suitable substitute for patient satisfaction.