Introduction: Owing to recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of lumbar disc pathology, the functional results obtained have improved, although there are still certain factors which affect this. The results in the work place are particularly problematic.
Objective: With the aim of finding an answer to the problem of relapse of the sciatica syndrome in patients operated on for hernia of the lumbar discs, we describe a study carried out in a consecutive group of patients who had had operations for hernias of lumbar discs whilst at work, within the context of revindication involved in this situation.
Patients and methods: We describe the results obtained in a series of 189 patients who had been operated on for lumbar disc pathology. Conventional open surgery was performed in 105 cases. Percutaneous nucleotomy was done in the remainder. In 17.39%, operations were done at more than one level, making a total of 265 discs operated on.
Results: These were considered good when the patient returned to his former work. Good results were obtained in 72% of the patients treated by open surgery and 68% of those treated by percutaneous nucleotomy. The re-operation rate was 8.57% for open surgery and 32.14% for percutaneous nucleotomy (p < 0.05).
Conclusions: The main reason for re-operation was a recurrence of disc protrusion. Good results were obtained in 80% of those reoperated. All reoperations were done using open surgery techniques. Overall assessment of the cases, including initial and re-operations, gave good results, reaching 83.59% in the current series.