Post-discharge care interventions to support patient recovery after elective degenerative spine surgery: a systematic review

Purpose: To characterize the type, content, and results of care interventions that support spine surgery patients in their early post-discharge recovery. Methods: This systematic review was conducted according to PRISMA guidelines. The literature search was conducted in March 2022 (updated in May 2023) in MEDLINE (Ovid), EMBASE (Ovid), CINAHL (Ebsco), PsycINFO (Ovid), and Scopus. Given the heterogeneity of the interventions, outcome parameters, and controls, data for pooling for meta-analysis was not possible. We performed a thematic analysis to categorize the characteristics of the type, content, and results of care interventions. Results: A total of 14 articles met the eligibility criteria. The included studies were published between 2008 and 2022 and included 1,399 unique patients with mean reported ages of 42.3 to 62.3 years. The reported interventions were divided into two categories: “Early active rehabilitation” and “Telemonitoring”. As for pain, function, quality of life, and activity the majority of the early active rehabilitation interventions showed no differences compared to usual care. In contrast, the telemonitoring interventions seemed mainly to be in favor of the interventions versus usual care in all of the aforementioned aspects. Conclusion: The included studies demonstrated diverse interventions across settings, populations, interventions, controls, follow-up times, and outcome measures. This variability suggests unclear patient needs and preferences for post-discharge care. Given the heterogeneity and overall study quality, further high-quality research is essential. Future studies should prioritize identifying these needs before intervention design.