History
A description of LSS was published by Sachs and Frankel in 1900, but the first clinical description of LSS is usually attributed to the Dutch neurosurgeon Henk Verbiest, whose report appeared in 1954.
Spinal stenosis began to be recognized as an impairing condition in the 1960s and 1970s. Porter and colleagues discovered that individuals who experience back pain and other symptoms are likely to have smaller spinal canals than those who are asymptomatic. Rothman reported that a normal sized lumbar canal is rarely encountered in persons with either disc disease or those requiring a de-roofing (laminectomy) procedure.
During the 1970s and 1980s, multiple case reports showed successful surgical treatment rates based on subjective assessment by surgeons, "before studies with more standardized assessment techniques began to emerge in the 1990s". Studies "rarely reported on the clinical course of patients with stenosis who were treated with observation, and many surgeons held to the belief that the natural history was poor". In 1992, Johnsson, Rosén and Udén described the natural history of LSS, with different conclusions about prognosis and treatment: "70% of patients reported no significant change in symptoms, 15% showed significant improvement, whereas 15% showed some deterioration. The investigators concluded that observation is a reasonable treatment option for lumbar stenosis and that significant neurologic deterioration is rare."
As of 2010, there are "no widely accepted diagnostic or classification criteria for the diagnosis of LSS and, as a consequence, studies use widely differing eligibility criteria that limit the generalisability of reported findings" and "few studies have examined how its prevalence or incidence is changing".
Read more about this topic: Lumbar Spinal Stenosis
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“I believe my ardour for invention springs from his loins. I can’t say that the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”
—Caresse Crosby (1892–1970)