CORRELATION BETWEEN LUMBAR SPINAL STENOSIS BASED ON MORPHOLOGY OF THE DURAL SAC AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE

ABSTRACT Objective: To evaluate the possible existence of a significant correlation between quality of life and severity classification of lumbar stenosis based on dural sac morphology in outpatients. Methods: Forty patients with a diagnosis of lumbar stenosis followed at a university hospital were submitted to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and quality of life questionnaires: Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), SF-36, Swiss Spinal Stenosis Questionnaire (SSS) and EQ-5D. They were classified as type A, B, C or D based on MRI. For the statistical analysis, the Spearman correlation was used. Results: Seventeen female patients and 23 male patients with mean age of 56.5 years constituted the sample. ODI had a mean dysfunction of 44.9%, the PCS score averaged 29.9, the MCS score was 41.3. The general symptoms of SSS presented a mean of 3.2 and the EQ-5D presented an average of 0.491. The patients with the highest severity in the classification were not necessarily those who presented worse scores in the quality of life questionnaires. Conclusion: The classification of severity of the lumbar spinal stenosis based on dural sac morphology does not correlate with the applied quality of life questionnaires. Level of Evidence III; Cross-sectional observational study.