PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Ehab Farag
AU  - Alaa A. Abd-Elsayed
AU  - Jarrod E. Dalton
AU  - Eman Nada
AU  - Brian M. Parker
TI  - Postoperative Vision Loss after Spine Surgery: A Single-Institution Case-Control Comparison
DP  - 2014 Jun 20
TA  - Ochsner Journal
PG  - 179--183
VI  - 14
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.ochsnerjournal.org/content/14/2/179.short
4100  - http://www.ochsnerjournal.org/content/14/2/179.full
SO  - Ochsner J2014 Jun 20; 14
AB  - Background Postoperative vision loss (POVL) after spine surgery is a rare but devastating outcome. We present the first case-control study from a single institution for POVL with the diagnoses of ischemic optic neuropathy or central vision loss after complex spine surgery.Methods POVL cases following spine surgeries between December 1995 and December 2010 at the Cleveland Clinic were identified retrospectively using administrative codes. Each instance of POVL was matched to 5 case-control patients based on age, gender, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, mean arterial pressure, and hematocrit. Duration of anesthesia, fluid volumes, and hemodynamic measurements were then compared between POVL cases and control cases using Wilcoxon rank sum test.Results Six patients developed POVL. These patients had significantly greater blood loss (P=0.002, Wilcoxon test) and a significantly greater volume of red blood cells transfused (P=0.006) than the control patients. No other intraoperative measures differed significantly after Bonferroni correction for multiple outcomes.Conclusion We found that patients with POVL had significantly greater blood loss and significantly more red blood cell transfusions than their matched controls.