ABSTRACT
Background: The prevalence of back pain has been reported between 49% and 80%. Except for cases that require immediatesurgical intervention, the first-line treatment involves medical choices. 90% of attacks of sciatica respond to conservativemanagement. Surgical intervention when indicated involves discectomy and various operative methods include laminectomydiscectomy, microlumbar discectomy, and microendoscopic discectomy. The objective of this study was to evaluate theadvantages and disadvantages and outcome of the above-mentioned surgical operations for lumbar disc herniation (LDH) andthen, specifically, the outcomes for each of them using Odom’s criteria.Materials and Methods: A prospective study was carried out between April 2015 and April 2017 to compare the advantages/disadvantages and outcome of various surgical interventions in LDH, namely laminectomy discectomy (Group A), microlumbardiscectomy (Group B), and microendoscopic discectomy (Group C) with each group consisting of 30 patients. All patients wereadmitted as per inclusion criteria.Results: In each group of our study, the mean age and sex distribution were comparable and statistically not significant. Ourstudy showed the post-operative hospital stay and the need for post-operative analgesia was low for microendoscopic surgery,but on long-term evaluation with Odom’s criteria, laminectomy achieved better outcomes than other methods.Conclusion: Our study showed that microlumbar discectomy and microendoscopic discectomy have a better short-term outcomeas compared to laminectomy discectomy. However, long-term results are comparable.