  Physical therapy is the first line of treatment for adults with symptoms from
degenerative spondylolisthesis. Surgical management is offered when
nonoperative options have not adequately relieved symptoms. We performed PubMed
literature search with the word 'spondylolisthesis', and updated till September
18, 2016. We selected original research data involving surgical treatment of
degenerative spondylolisthesis, and in total there were n articles, including
data reported from Japan (n=37 series), South Korea (n=11 series), mainland
China (n=5 series), and ROC (Taiwan, n=3 series), America (n=20 series), Europe
(n=23 series). The mean age of each study were extracted and used a single
entry. We tried our best to filter out double/multiple reported data. Our
results showed the median age of degenerative spondylolisthesis patients
underwent surgical treatment was 66 years in Japan, 60 years in South Korea, 59
years in mainland China, 59 years in ROC (Taiwan), 65 years in USA, and 66
years in Europe. This study indicates Japan and South Korea may have different
surgical practice pattern. It will be of interested to investigate whether more
proportion of degenerative spondylolisthesis patients have been treated
surgically in South Korea than in Japan. The cost-effectiveness of different
approaches may warrant further analysis by professional spine surgeons.
