Inspired Spine recently presented on the oblique lateral lumbar interbody fusion (OLLIF) procedure at the International Society for the Advancement of Spine Surgery (12–14 April; Boca Raton, USA). Hamid Abbasi, who developed the OLLIF, discussed the procedure, including results showing procedure times roughly twice as fast as standard open transforaminal interbody fusion (TLIF).
Abbasi discussed the key findings of Inspired Spine’s study, “Oblique Lateral Lumbar Interbody Fusion (OLLIF): Technical Notes and Early Results of a Single Surgeon Comparative Study”. The research compared the OLLIF procedure to an open transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) procedure.
The study of 124 patients showed surgery time for the OLLIF was approximately twice as fast as the open TLIF (mean: 135 min) and blood loss was reduced by over 80% compared to TLIF. The OLLIF surgeries were performed with biplanar fluoroscopy with an incision amounting to one centimetre.
Inspired Spine has continued the data acquisition since the initial 124 patients, with over 500 OLLIF procedures now being performed in the USA. According to Abbasi “With the OLLIF procedure, we use a tiny incision and do not cut through the patient’s muscle tissue like traditional procedures. The procedures are faster, have less blood loss and patients experience a dramatically faster recovery with less pain.”