Four studies were at a low risk of bias. These studies included a total of 873 patients undergoing spinal surgery. An association between low fat infiltration and greater improvement in LBP and disability following surgery was identified. There was insufficient evidence to identify a relationship between cross-sectional area (CSA) and LBP or disability. CONCLUSIONS This systematic review found evidence for an association between low multifidus fat infiltration on MRI at baseline and greater reductions in measures of LBP and disability following surgical treatment. There is also limited evidence for an association between larger pre-operative multifidus CSA and improvements in disability, but not pain. The findings of this review should be interpreted with caution due to the small quantity of the available literature.PURPOSE Spinal DSA is the "gold standard" technique to identify the spinal vascular diseases with venous hypertensive myelopathy (VHM). However, sometimes spinal DSA can find nothing in patients with confirmed spinal vascular anomalies. Many of the reasons are avoidable technical factors. Nevertheless, there are also some non-technical factors. The objective of this study was to identify the non-technical factors. METHODS The cause of the missed findings was found as the non-technical factors in 14 patients. The clinical records and radiological findings of the 14 patients were reviewed. RESULTS The so-called standard spinal angiography can found nothing in the 14 patients. Additional angiography was performed and detected the lesions. Eight patients were found lesions supplied by carotid arteries or iliac arteries, including 2 cranial DAVF with internal carotid artery blood supply, 3 cranial DAVF with external carotid artery blood supply and 2 pelvic AVF with internal iliac artery blood supply and 1 pelvic AVM with internal iliac artery blood supply. Six patients were caused by stenosis of spinal draining vein, including 3 stenosis of the third lumbar veins and 3 stenosis of left renal veins combined with the reno-spinal trunk. CONCLUSIONS In order to avoid the missed findings of spinal vascular diseases with VHM, the technical factors should be reduced by performing a rigorous comprehensive angiography. To reduce the non-technical factors, the angiography of the internal iliac artery, the carotid artery systems and spinal draining veins should be performed in some special cases if the routine spinal angiography can find nothing.PURPOSE Little is known about the qualitative results (postoperative upper/lower lumbar arches distribution and lumbar apex or inflection point positioning) of lumbar pedicle subtraction osteotomies (L-PSO) depending on the level of L-PSO. METHODS We conducted a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data of adult deformity patients undergoing single-level L-PSO. We analyzed several variables in preoperative and postoperative sagittal radiographs L-PSO level, Roussouly classification (R-type), inflection point (InfP), lumbar apex (LApex), spinopelvic parameters, lordosis distribution index (LDI = L4-S1/L1-S1), and number of levels in the lordosis (NVL). check details Comparisons between PSO levels were performed to determine lordosis distribution and sagittal shape using ANOVA test and Chi-squared statistics. RESULTS A total of 126 patients were included in this study. L5-PSO mainly increased the lower lumbar arch, thereby increasing LDI. L4 increased upper/lower arches similarly. PSOs at and above L3 increased the upper lumbar arch, thereby decreasing LDI (P  0.05. CONCLUSIONS The level of L-PSO influenced upper/lower lumbar arches distribution, and lumbar apex and inflection point positioning. The correct level should be chosen based on the individual assessment of each patient.Increasing evidence suggests that the environment encountered by migrating landbirds during the nonbreeding season, including temperature and precipitation, may influence individuals and population processes in subsequent seasons. However, to date, most studies have focused on linkages between factors encountered during the wintering and breeding periods in long-distance, primarily insectivorous landbirds. Here, we take advantage of a long-term (23 breeding seasons) data set on the arrival and breeding ecology of female field sparrows (Spizella pusilla), a granivorous, short-distance species that winters in the southeastern USA, to look for time periods (windows) over the preceding winter and spring migratory periods when average daily precipitation or temperature may have influenced when a female arrived at breeding grounds in northeastern Pennsylvania and correlates of seasonal reproductive performance. We employed a sliding window analysis approach using weather data obtained from the south of our site (to evaluate effects of weather experienced during the nonbreeding period) and, separately, near our site (to evaluate effects of weather experienced during the breeding period), finding windows in which temperature and precipitation during the nonbreeding period were associated with arrival timing and clutch initiation day and a window in which temperature experienced during the breeding period was associated with clutch initiation day. We did not, however, find evidence that temperature or precipitation, either during the nonbreeding period or breeding period, was associated with clutch size nor total egg volume. Finally, early arriving females initiated clutches early, produced larger clutches, more nests, and more total eggs than later arriving females. Our findings contribute to the growing body of evidence that events experienced prior to the breeding season may influence individuals and population processes in subsequent seasons.The spatial synoptic classification (SSC) is a holistic categorical assessment of the daily weather conditions at specific locations; it is a useful tool for assessing weather effects on health. In this study, we assessed (a) the effect of hot weather types and the duration of heat events on cardiovascular and respiratory mortality in summer and (b) the effect of cold weather types and the duration of cold events on cardiovascular and respiratory mortality in winter. A time-stratified case-crossover design combined with a distributed lag nonlinear model was carried out to investigate the association of weather types with cause-specific mortality in two southern (Skåne and Stockholm) and two northern (Jämtland and Västerbotten) locations in Sweden. During summer, in the southern locations, the Moist Tropical (MT) and Dry Tropical (DT) weather types increased cardiovascular and respiratory mortality at shorter lags; both hot weather types substantially increased respiratory mortality mainly in Skåne. The impact of heat events on mortality by cardiovascular and respiratory diseases was more important in the southern than in the northern locations at lag 0.