Multisegmental lumbar spinal stenosis—simple decompression is better?

Lumbar spinal stenosis (LS) is probably one of the most prevalent symptomatic spinal disease in older patients, with most of them requiring surgical treatment to relief their symptoms (1-3). Surgery objective is to decompress the nerve roots and, sometimes, stabilize the spine and/or restore the normal or near normal alignment (1-4). Additionally, there are some good evidences that surgery is better than conservative treatment to relief moderate and severe symptoms due to stenosis (5-8). Despite the trends in increasing the use of implants and reconstructive surgery, the vast majority of patients will have clinical improvement with simple nerve roots decompression (5-8).