A retrospective study carried out between January 2000 and August 2022 by Scottish surgeons on 113 patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) showed that 43 of them (38%) had posterior spinal fusion for scoliosis (33) or kyphoscoliosis (10).
- The age at surgery ranged from 10 years 9 months to 18 years 3 months, with a follow-up of 2 years to 22 years 6 months.
- There were no operative or postoperative deaths at one month.
- The median post-operative survival time was 14 years and 2 months.
- During the follow-up period, 17 died of respiratory failure or severe pneumonia, six of left ventricular failure and one of tracheal haemorrhage.
- The reduction in postoperative survival correlated with preoperative axial spinal imbalance and pelvic obliquity, as well as with the extent of intraoperative blood loss.
- Preoperative sagittal spinal imbalance also tends to reduce survival.
- At the limit of significance, lumbosacral fusion would improve survival by more than three years compared with arthrodesis without pelvic fixation.
