A pilot study to propose a treatment-based classification for subgrouping patients with surgically treated degenerative lumbar spine with focus on comparing decompression versus decompression with fusion

In the current study we report HRQoL for two degenerative spine presentations; lumbar spinal stenosis with and without significant back pain with two treatments; decompression with and without fusion. Owning to the complexity of degenerative spine, the current paper proposes reporting treatment effectiveness and outcome for 6 TBC groups surgically treated patient's subgroups with the aim of building a database from reported outcome studies that can use the TBC subgrouping model for guiding therapeutic selection for each individual patient.