Is Endoscopic Discectomy the Next Gold Standard in the Management of Lumbar Disc Disease? Systematic Review and Superiority Analysis

Study Design:
Systematic review and meta-analysis.
Objectives:
We performed this meta-analysis to evaluate whether endoscopic discectomy (ED) shows superiority compared with the current gold standard of microdiscectomy (MD) in management of lumbar disc disease.
Materials and Methods:

We conducted independent and duplicate electronic database search including PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library from 1990 till April 2020 for studies comparing ED and MD in the management of lumbar disc disease. Analysis was performed in R platform using OpenMeta[Analyst] software.
Results:

We included 27 studies, including 11 randomized controlled trials (RCTs), 7 nonrandomized prospective, and 9 retrospective studies involving 4018 patients in the meta-analysis. We stratified the results based on the study design. Considering the heterogeneity in some results between study designs, we weighed our conclusion essentially based on results of RCTs. On analyzing the RCTs, superiority was established at 95% confidence interval for ED compared with MD in terms of functional outcomes like Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) score ( P = .008), duration of surgery ( P = .023), and length of hospital stay ( P < .001) although significant heterogeneity was noted. Similarly, noninferiority to MD was established by ED in other outcomes like visual analogue scale score for back pain ( P = .860) and leg pain ( P = .495), MacNab classification ( P = .097), recurrences ( P = .993), reoperations ( P = .740), and return-to-work period ( P = .748).
Conclusion:

Our meta-analysis established the superiority of endoscopic discectomy in outcome measures like ODI score, duration of surgery, overall complications, length of hospital stay and noninferiority in other measures analyzed. With recent advances in the field of ED, the procedure has the potential to take over the place of MD as the gold standard of care in management of lumbar disc disease.