The Cost of BMP-Related Complications: One Spine Surgeon Adds It Up

A retrospective review of patients who underwent minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion from 2007 to 2010 that included rhBMP-2 found that complications resulted in substantial financial cost for the patients and surgeon, according to a report published in The Spine Journal.

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The review included 573 patients who underwent an MIS laminectomy with bilateral facetectomy, single TLIF cage, unilateral pedicel screw fixation and 12 mg or 4.2 mg of rhBMP-2 by a single surgeon. Of those patients, 10 underwent 15 additional procedures based on recalcitrant radiculopathy and CT evidence of neuroforaminal bone graft, vertebral body osteolysis and/or cage migration, according to the report.

 

An additional 39 patients underwent re-operation for clinically symptomatic pseudarthrosis and bone overgrowth associated with nerve impingement and radiculopathy was found in 10 patients.

 

The average total cost per procedure was $19, 224 and costs for re-operation equaled $14,785 per encounter for neuroforaminal bone growth and $20,267 for pseudarthrosis.

 

Kern Signh, MD, Alejandro Marquez-Lara, MD, Thomas D. Cha, MD, MBA, Safdar N. Khan, MD, and Steven J. Fineberg, MD, were physician authors of the study.

 

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