Calvin Kuo, MD

“I see so many patients who are 80 and older, and they want to live out their golden years with full health, be fully active and functional, and take care of themselves and have a good quality of life,” says Calvin Kuo, MD, spine surgeon at KP Oakland. “A common question is whether or not they can have elective lumbar surgery, and spinal fusion if necessary, in a safe way as they get older.”

Understanding whether elective lumbar spinal surgery is safe for older patients was the key impetus for Dr. Kuo’s study, “Are Octogenarians at Higher Risk of Complications After Elective Lumbar Spinal Fusion Surgery? Analysis of a Cohort of 7,880 Patients From the Kaiser Permanente Spine Registry,” published in the Spine Journal in 2022.

“Our patients are getting older, they’re getting more challenged, and we all want them to live their very best lives,” says Rita Ng, MD, FACC, physician-in-chief of KP Oakland. “Dr. Kuo’s research enables us to do that with an evidence-based lens and the strongest research and analytic capability possible.”

Dr. Kuo and his research partners analyzed data from 7,880 patients in the KP Spine Registry who underwent elective lumbar spinal fusion surgery over a 10-year period for degenerative disk disease or spondylolisthesis, a painful slippage of the spine’s vertebrae.

Compared with patients between 50 and 79 years of age, those over 80 had no higher risk of reoperation within 2 years and no differences in the risk of complications such as readmission, emergency room visits, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, or mortality. Spinal punctures known as durotomy during the surgery and pneumonia within 30 days were more likely.

“What Dr. Kuo has been able to do for older patients is to provide a large degree of reassurance that their outcomes, in the hands of KP Northern California surgeons, are equal to those at younger stages of life,” says John W. Morehouse, MD, FACEP, CPPS, physician-in-chief of KP Richmond.