Unilateral Biportal Endoscopy Versus MIS-TLIF in Lumbar Spondylolisthesis: A Randomized Control Trial

Lumbar spondylolisthesis (LSP) is the most common degenerative lumbar disease in the elderly, and the severe patients need surgical treatment. The elderly are often complicated with many medical diseases and the perioperative risk is high, so minimally invasive surgery is a new direction for spinal surgeons to treat LSP. Unilateral biportal endoscopy (UBE) is a new spinal minimally invasive technique improved. The results of pilot studies showed that it had the advantages of less traumas, fewer complications, quicker recover，and the clinical and imaging outcome was remarkable. Therefore, the present study aims to establish a multicenter, large sample, randomized controlled study to explore the technical advantages and surgical indications of this new technique in the treatment of LSP by comparing with the classical minimally invasive posterior spinal interbody fusion; (2) to compare the postoperative clinical and imaging results and analyze the surgical complications and preventive measures; (3) to establish two-year follow-up to further quantify the clinical and imaging outcome of UBE. Therefore, the present study will further verify and quantify the safety and effectiveness of the UBE in the treatment of LSP on the basis of previous studies, and provide a new clinical approach for minimally invasive treatment of LSP.