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NORDSTEN

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Inclusion

A total of 988 LSS patients with or without spondylolistheses were included in the NORDSTEN study from 2014 to 2018. Participants are similar to LSS patients treated in routine surgical practice, supporting the external validity of study results.

NORDSTEN includes three parallel studies:

  1. NORDSTEN-SST: The randomized spinal stenosis trial comparing three different decompression techniques.
  2. NORDSTEN-DS: The randomized degenerative spondylolisthesis trial investigating whether decompression surgery alone is as good as decompression with instrumented fusion.
  3. NORDSTEN-OC: The observational cohort tracking the natural course of LSS in patients without planned surgical treatment.
flow chart showing the inclusion algorithm for the RCT studies

Data Collection and Variables

Data collection is conducted by local coordinators and the NORDSTEN-study coordinating center (FORMI). Time points are: preoperative (baseline), 3 months, 1, 2, 5 and 10 years postoperatively.

flow chart showing the data collection for the RCT studies