The purpose of a study by Nozawa et al. (A-10) was to evaluate the outcome of surgical repair of pars interarticularis defect by segmental wire fixation in young adults with lumbar spondylolysis. The authors cite literature indicating that segmental wire fixation has been successful in the treatment of nonathletes with spondylolysis and point out that no information existed on the results of this type of surgery in athletes. In a retrospective study of subjects having surgery between 1993 and 2000, the authors found 20 subjects who had undergone the surgery. The following table shows the age (years)

at surgery and duration (months) of follow-up care for these subjects.

Duration of Follow-Up

(Months)

Age

(Years)

Duration of Follow-Up

(Months)

Age

(Years)

103 37 38 27 68 27 36 31 62 12 34 24 60 18 30 23 60 18 19 14 54 28 19 23 49 25 19 18 44 20 19 29 42 18 17 24 41 30 16 27 Source: Satoshi Nozawa, Katsuji Shimizu, Kei Miyamoto, and Mizuo Tanaka, “Repair of Pars Interarticularis Defect by Segmental Wire Fixation in Young Athletes with Spondylolysis,” American Journal of Sports Medicine, 31 (2003), pp. 359–364.
May we conclude, on the basis of these data, that in a population of similar subjects there is an association between age and duration of follow-up? Let a ¼ :05.