Comparing Patients' and Surgeons' Expectations of Lumbar Spine Surgery

February 11, 2026 updated by: Hospital for Special Surgery, New York
The goals of this study are to assess concordance between the patient-surgeon pair regarding expectations of lumbar spine surgery.

Study Overview

Status

Active, not recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Low back pain is a prevalent medical condition afflicting primarily older adults but affecting all age groups and due to acute and non-acute diagnoses. Multiple possible conservative therapies exist; however, their major drawback is that the time required to advance therapy is often prolonged and accompanied by persistent disability and psychological suffering. Thus, some patients seek surgery after exhausting other therapies and some patients seek surgery earlier in their course. For both groups, decisions to undergo surgery are based on personal circumstances, perspectives, and expectations of outcome. Prior studies have shown that patients typically have high expectations of orthopedic surgery. Although high aspirations can be motivating, they also may predispose to poor outcomes if they are unrealistic and cause patients to become discouraged with recuperation time and ignore recommended lifestyle changes that avert progression of disease. Expectations that are too low, conversely, also may predispose to poor outcomes if patients lack motivation to participate in rehabilitation and to follow postop precautions. In order to achieve maximum benefit from surgery, patients and surgeons need to share an understanding of what is possible, probable, and realistic, and to join together and work toward the same goals. The primary objective of this proposed cross-sectional study is to assess the concordance between patients and their surgeons regarding expectations of lumbar spine surgery. Patients scheduled for lumbar surgery will be dichotomized according to whether they have acute versus non-acute conditions. Several days before surgery patients will complete the validated Lumbar Spine Surgery Expectations Survey measuring their physical and psychological expectations. Also before surgery their surgeons will complete the surgeon's version of the same survey for each patient. The main outcome will be a comparison of the concordance within each patient-surgeon pair according to acute versus non-acute groups based on the concordance correlation coefficient. Multivariate regression analysis based on the GEE method will be used to assess covariates.

Study Type

Observational

Enrollment (Actual)

437

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • New York
      • New York, New York, United States, 10021
        • Hospital for Special Surgery

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Sampling Method

Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Patients scheduled for lumbar spine surgery and their surgeons

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Patients will be eligible if they are ≥ 18 years old, speak English, and are scheduled for non-trauma-related lumbar spine surgery.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Patients will be excluded if they have cognitive deficits and cannot provide informed consent.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Comparison of Lumbar Spine Surgery Expectations Survey scores for patients and their surgeons.
Time Frame: participants will be surveyed before surgery, an expected average of 5 days
comparison of patients and surgeons responses
participants will be surveyed before surgery, an expected average of 5 days

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Hospital for Special Surgery, New York

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Carol A Mancuso, MD, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

September 1, 2014

Primary Completion (Estimated)

December 1, 2026

Study Completion (Estimated)

December 1, 2026

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

September 30, 2014

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

October 3, 2014

First Posted (Estimated)

October 6, 2014

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

February 13, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 11, 2026

Last Verified

October 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2014-287

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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