Dr. Morgan Lorio surveys the landscape of vertebral augmentation to find contentious studies and offers suggestions to educate the public and other practitioners. Morgan P. Lorio, MD, FACS Chair, ISASS Coding & Reimbursement Task Force The AAOS Clinical Practice Guidelines on the Treatment of Symptomatic Osteoporotic Compression Fractures, adopted in September 2010, were developed by a multidisciplinary volunteer work group and based on an algorithm that used level of evidence to rigorously qualify data. Two studies (2009) – by Buchbinder and Kallmes – were identified by AAOS to be Level I and were apparently determined to be a sufficient litmus test to diminish the importance of the mountain of Level II-IV evidence that suggested value to these procedures. A SpineLine
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