Sarcopenia is a common metabolic disease closely related to age in elderly patients. Currently, research on sarcopenia is not thorough enough, but its adverse prognosis for spinal surgery has been confirmed. The presence of sarcopenia may have a certain degree of impact on the treatment plan, preoperative planning, and perioperative management of patients undergoing spinal surgery. Recently, sarcopenia has been a research hotspot, with a large number of reports on the development of sarcopenia, the impact of sarcopenia on spinal surgery prognosis, and drug, nutritional, and exercise therapy interventions for sarcopenia. This article will provide a review of the previous text, focusing on summarizing the research progress on the relationship between sarcopenia and spinal surgery, providing ideas for the research and clinical diagnosis and treatment of sarcopenia in spinal surgery, and preparing for related clinical research in the future.