Clinical Study Does Duration of Preoperative Sciatica Impact Surgical Outcomes in Patients with Lumbar Disc Herniation?

Copyright © 2014 Farzad Omidi-Kashani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. In lumbar disc herniation, most authors recommend nonoperative treatment for the first few weeks of presentation, but what about the upper limit of this golden period?The aim of this study is to assess the effect of preoperative sciatica duration on surgical outcome of lumbar disc herniation. Methods. We retrospectively evaluated 240 patients (124 males and 116 females) with a mean age of 36.4 ± 5.9 years (range 16 to 63) surgically treated due to primary stable L4-L5 disc herniation. The patients were placed into two groups: withmore and less than 12-month duration of preoperative sciatalgia. Disability and pain weremeasured by OswestryDisability Index (ODI) andVisual Analogue Scale (VAS).Wilcoxon test andMann-Whitne