ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Most of evidence-based studies include both adult degenerative scoliosis and adult idiopathic scoliosis, which lead to indirectness in the results, and suppress the promotion of the evidence.OBJECTIVE: To systematically analyze the current clinical researches, and to review the curative efficacy of lateral lumbar interbody fusion for adult degenerative scoliosis.METHODS: A computer-based research of Medline, EMBASE, CENTRAL, WanFang and CNKI databases from December 2015 to December 2016, was performed with the key words of lateral lumbar interbody fusion, direct lumbar interbody fusion, extreme lateral interbody fusion, minimal invasive surgery, adult scoliosis. The articles were screened based on the inclusion criteria, and the clinical symptom improvement and radiological changes were analyzed.RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Totally 13 articles were included. In the treatment of adult degenerative scoliosis, lateral lumbar interbody fusion shows less blood loss, short hospitalization time, significantly improved symptoms, satisfactory correction at the coronal plane, and low incidence of long-term complications. However, it has the poor correction at the sagittal plane and high incidence of short-term postoperative complications. Therefore, intraoperative neurologic monitoring is necessary and the combination with internal fixation has obtained good effectiveness.