The Role of Psychosocial Screening in Patient Selection for Spine Surgery: A Review

Background: The purpose of this review is to provide a brief history of previous attempts at developing patient screening tools and to further examine the definitions of these psychological concepts, relevance to clinical outcomes, and implications for spine surgeons during preoperative patient assessments.

Methods: A literature review was performed by 2 independent researchers to identify original manuscripts related to spine surgery and novel psychological concepts. The history of presurgical psychology screening was also studied, and definitions of frequently utilized metrics were detailed.

Results: Seven manuscripts were identified that utilized psychological metrics for preoperative risk assessments and correlated outcomes with these scores. The metrics most frequently used in the literature included resilience, patient activation, grit, and self-efficacy.

Discussion: Current literature favors resilience and patient activation as important metrics for preoperative patient screening. Available studies demonstrate significant associations between these character traits and patient outcomes. Further research is warranted to investigate the roles of preoperative psychological screening to optimize patient selection in spine surgery.

Clinical relevance: The purpose of this review is to provide clinicians with a reference for available psychosocial screening tools and their relevance to patient selection. This review also serves to guide future research directions given the importance of this topic.