Do presence and location of annular tear influence clinical outcome after lumbar total disc arthroplasty? A prospective 1-year follow-up study

Although patients with annular tears and patients without annular tears improve after lumbar artificial disc replacement, those with central annular tears or without tears have significantly lower disability scores than those with paracentral tears or lateral tears, whose outcome scores showed significantly less improvement (P ≤ .03). In particular, patients with central tears have less postoperative leg pain than those with paracentral annular tears. In this study the presence or absence of an annular tear on magnetic resonance imaging was not a significant predictive factor for clinical outcome. Further investigation regarding the effects of paracentral annular tears and surgical techniques should be explored.