The Michel Benoist and Robert Mulholland yearly European spine journal review: a survey of the “medical” articles in European spine journal, 2019

[摘要] Many years have gone by since the Editors of ESJ asked Robert Mulholland and me to take a fresh, end-of-the-year look at the articles appearing in the latest volume of the Journal. From the wealth of information provided this year, I have tried to extract the most medically oriented papers. My choice of articles is not a ranking: all the 2019 selected papers contribute to presenting new information, provoking discussion and further research. For example, a basic research study has demonstrated a link between obesity, disk degeneration and low-back pain, as well as the biochemical mechanisms of this link. Infection by Propionibacterium acnes as a cause of disk degeneration and herniation remains controversial, calling for future studies with efcient culture techniques and control groups. The ISSLS degenerative spinal phenotype group recommends a revision of the present Modic changes classifcation. It was also demonstrated that the use of anti-TNF alpha in the treatment of spondyloarthropathies could not only obtain a good clinical outcome, but also a signifcant improvement of lumbar lordosis. In a more surgically oriented paper, Le Huec et al. [1] update the spinopelvic parameters and sagittal balance of the spine, allowing for better-planned surgical management of the patients. The above papers and others highlight the fact that overall, spine research is progressing in many domains, improving care of patients with spinal diseases. Clearly, it is still “springtime for low-back pain.”.