Best Paper Award SSA 2018 Presented to Dr. Mark Arts

Dr. Mark Arts, a Dutch neurosurgeon from The Hague, delivered two podium presentations at the 2018 Spine Society of Australia 29th Annual Scientific Meeting, 27-29 April in Adelaide. One of his presented abstracts got elected as Best Paper of the 2018 Annual Scientific Meeting.

Both talks were delivered in the Free Paper Session that focused on Lumbar Disc Herniation.

Best Paper Award:

Tubular discectomy vs conventional microdiscectomy for the treatment of lumbar disk herniation: Long-term results of a randomized controlled trial. - Mark Arts

Conclusions:

• Long-term (5 years) functional and clinical outcome did not differ between patients allocated to tubular discectomy versus conventional microdiscectomy.
• Reoperations were more frequent in the tubular discectomy group (18% vs 13%, P=0.10), but the difference was not statistically significant.

This paper was followed by an update of long-term outcomes from the Barricaid RCT, and was presented on behalf of the Anular Closure RCT Study Group:

The utility of annular closure for long-term prevention of symptomatic reherniation and reoperation after lumbar discectomy: 4-year data from a multi-center, prospective, randomized superiority study. - Mark Arts

Conclusions:

• Reherniation and reoperation rates following lumbar discectomy are shockingly high in a large anular defect subpopulation (27.6% through 4 years).
• At all time points through 4 years postoperative, the use of an anular closure device (Barricaid) significantly lowers rates of symptomatic reherniation and reoperation, when compared to limited microdiscectomy alone.
• Barricaid ACD does not interfere with revision surgery.

During the session, one of Australia’s leading spine surgeons commended Dr. Arts for bringing robust scientific data to Australia.