Decompressive laminectomy for lumbar stenosis: Review of 65 consecutive cases from Tema, Ghana

There have been previous reports describing the aetiological, clinical aml prognostic aspects of patients with lumbar stenos is (LS) in West Africa 1-5; to date no such report has been published from Ghana. Decompressive lumbar laminectomy (DLL) for LS has been performed in Ghana for at least 35 years, however there has never been a published report documenting patient demographics, preoperative symptom complex, complication rates and clinical results. Since 1996, DLL and instrumented stabilization have been introduced in Ghana, with attendant tremendously increased cost of implants. The lack of prior data on LS, DLL and non­instrumented fusion makes this new introduction difficult to justify; it is also difficult to compare the clinical results of the two methods. It has also hitherto been impossible to compare the results ofDLL in Ghana with series published from other centres.