Lumbar disc herniation (LDH) is a common and frequent disease in orthopedics and is one of the common causes of low back and leg pain. Treatment for this disease can be divided into two categories: surgery and conservative treatment. To compare the clinical outcomes of the two treatment options, a SPORT trial (The Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial) was initiated, funded by the NIH and led by Professor James Weinstein, Editor-in-Chief of SPINE, the journal of spine surgery at Dartmouth Medical School. The main objective of the SPORT trial is to compare the clinical outcomes of conservative versus surgical treatment of three major degenerative lumbar spine diseases: lumbar disc herniation, lumbar spinal stenosis, and degenerative lumbar spondylolisthesis, and the resulting low back pain, as well as the cost-benefit ratio between the two. JAMA and other top medical journals. Recently, Jon D. Lurie et al. published the results of the SPORT trial comparing the clinical efficacy of surgical versus conservative treatment for lumbar disc herniation in a prospective and observational cohort study with over 8 years of patient follow-up in the journal SPINE. After a rigorous screening process, 1244 patients with lumbar disc herniation who met the inclusion criteria were recruited for the study, including 501 in the randomized cohort and 743 in the observational cohort, with a mean age of 41.7 years and no statistically significant differences. Treatment options included standard discectomy (IDH) or conventional conservative treatment, with the final treatment option determined by the patient and physician. Study endpoints were 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, and annually up to 8 years. The study’s primary outcome measures included the SF-36 Somatic Pain and Physical Functioning (PF) Scale (0 for the most severe and 100 for the least severe) and the American Orthopaedic Association MODEMS version of the Oswestry Disorder Index (0 for the least severe and 100 for the most severe); secondary outcome measures included sciatica SBI, improvement in symptoms, and work status. Study results showed that 96% of patients were followed up for ≥1 year and 63% for ≥8 years. In the randomized cohort, 60% of patients in the surgical treatment group eventually underwent surgery and 48% of patients in the conservative treatment group eventually underwent surgery; in the observation cohort, in the surgical treatment group (521 patients), 95% underwent surgery; in the conservative treatment group (222 patients), 56 (25%) patients who chose conservative treatment eventually underwent surgery. The ITT analysis (intent-to-treat analysis) of the cohort study showed that surgical treatment may be superior, with surgery significantly improving patients’ sciatica SBI, which was statistically significant; however, the improvements in ODI, SF-36 pain, and PF were not statistically significant. the AT analysis (as-treated analysis) showed that surgical treatment was better, with SF 36 somatic pain score, SF-36 PF, and ODI were significantly improved compared with conservative treatment. Because of the large number of crossover between patient groups, intention-to-treat analysis (ITT) of the results showed that 8 years after surgery, there was no significant difference in the main clinical functional indicators between patients in the surgery group and patients in the conservative treatment group, but secondary indicators such as sciatica and improvement in self-symptoms were significantly better in the surgery group than in the conservative treatment group; the results of as to treat analysis (as to treat analysis) showed that patients in the surgery group were significantly better in the main functional indicators than in the conservative treatment group. The results of the as to treat analysis showed that the main functional indicators of the patients in the surgery group were significantly better than those in the conservative treatment group; the functional improvement was significant after 8 years in both surgery and conservative treatment patients, and the improvement effect persisted. The authors concluded that for patients who strictly grasp the indications for surgery, surgical treatment can yield more benefits than conservative treatment; the effect of surgical treatment on symptom improvement persisted for 8 years after surgery.