Disclosures: Corey Snyder: No financial relationships or conflicts of interest

Background and/or Objectives: To evaluate the association between delays in lower back procedures, like spinal and nerve block injections, and patient outcomes. We hypothesized that delays in these procedures are associated with worse patient outcomes.

Design: Patients collected from a spine center registry from a single institution between January 2019 and February 2021. Patient data were retrospectively reviewed using their electronic medical record (EMR).

Setting: Spine center registry from a single institution.

Participants: Patients excluded if researchers could not access their EMR, their EMR missed any of the main outcome measurements, or their procedure was not a spinal or nerve block injection. Out of 1608 patients initially provided from the spine center registry, only 556 met all inclusion criteria.

Interventions: Not applicable.

Main Outcome Measures: Five separate pain scores measured using questionnaires given before a patient’s procedure and at a 3-month follow-up visit. The mean difference between each pain score’s baseline and 3-month score was compared between “Short Delay” (14-30 days) and “Long Delay” (31+ days) versus “No Delay” (0-13 days) groups.

Results: No significant difference in pain scores between varying degrees of delay was noted (all p>0.05) except in the mean Oswestry Back Disability score difference between “No Delay” (5.299) and “Short Delay” (9.825) (Mean difference in “No Delay”– “Short Delay” = -4.525, 95% Confidence Interval: -8.338 to –0.715, p= 0.016).

Conclusions: Delays in lower back procedures mentioned above are not associated with worse patient outcomes. In the event of an unavoidable delay in these procedures, clinicians can reassure patients that their procedure should not be less effective. Multiple institution studies with larger samples sizes, patients with longer delays, and longer follow-ups should be performed to further support these findings.

Level of Evidence: Level III

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PM&R Meeting Abstracts - https://pmrjabstracts.org/abstract/impact-of-delays-in-lower-back-procedures-on-patient-outcomes/