In many cases, surgery should be performed as quickly as possible after symptoms of achondroplasia occur for the best long-term outcomes.
For the study, researchers examined 49 patients with achondroplasia who underwent a primary laminectomy for spinal stenosis. The patients were an average age of 37.7 years old, had an average body mass index of 31.8 and experienced symptoms for an average of 74 months.
Patients with a time-to-surgery interval of less than six months were 7.13 times more likely to have improvement in walking distance and four times more likely to experience a Rankin level improvement than the patients who waited longer than six months. The intervals of patients who received surgery up to 12 and 24 months after symptoms appeared were associated with of improved walking distances compared with those who had longer time-to-surgery intervals, but the Rankin level difference was not statistically significant.
Read the abstract about surgery for patients with achondroplasia.
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