Introduction:

In the current study, we sought to compare baseline demographic, clinical, and operative characteristics, as well as baseline and follow-up patient reported outcomes (PROs) of patients with any depressive and/or anxiety disorder undergoing surgery for low-grade spondylolisthesis using a national spine registry.

Patients and methods:

The Quality Outcomes Database (QOD) was queried for patients undergoing surgery for Meyerding grade 1 lumbar spondylolisthesis undergoing 1-2 level decompression or 1 level fusion at 12 sites with the highest number of patients enrolled in QOD with 2-year follow-up data.

Results:

Of the 608 patients identified, 25.6 % (n = 156) had any depressive and/or anxiety disorder. Patients with a depressive/anxiety disorder were less likely to be discharged home (p < 0.001). At 3=months, patients with a depressive/anxiety disorder had higher back pain (p < 0.001), lower quality of life (p < 0.001) and higher disability (p = 0.013); at 2 year patients with depression and/or anxiety had lower quality of life compared to those without (p < 0.001). On multivariable regression, depression was associated with significantly lower odds of achieving 20 % or less ODI (OR 0.44, 95 % CI 0.21-0.94,p = 0.03). Presence of an anxiety disorder was not associated with decreased odds of achieving that milestone at 3 months. The presence of depressive-disorder, anxiety-disorder or both did not have an impact on ODI at 2 years. Finally, patient satisfaction at 2-years did not differ between the two groups (79.8 % vs 82.7 %,p = 0.503).

Conclusion:

We found that presence of a depressive-disorder may impact short-term outcomes among patients undergoing surgery for low grade spondylolisthesis but longer term outcomes are not affected by either a depressive or anxiety disorder.