BACKGROUND Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is the common term used to describe patients with symptoms related to the anatomical reduction of the lumbar spinal canal size. However, some subjects may have a markedly narrowed canal without any symptoms. This raises the question of what is the actual role of central canal stenosis in symptomatic patients. The purpose of this study was to compare radio...

BACKGROUND Senile systemic amyloidosis (SSA) derived from wild-type transthyretin is a fairly common condition of old individuals, particularly men. The main presentation is by cardiac involvement, which can lead to severe restrictive cardiomyopathy. SSA is, however, a systemic disease, and amyloid deposits may appear in many other tissues but are thought to be without clinical symptoms outside...

BACKGROUND Lumbar spinal stenosis is the most frequent reason for spinal surgery in elderly people. For patients with moderate or severe symptoms different conservative and surgical treatment modalities are recommended, but knowledge about the effectiveness, in particular of the conservative treatments, is scarce. There is some evidence that surgery improves outcome in about two thirds of the p...

STUDY DESIGN A prospective, randomized study on patients who underwent posterior lumbar decompression with bilateral posterolateral arthrodesis. OBJECTIVE To determine the long-term influence of pseudarthrosis on the clinical outcome of patients with degenerative spondylolisthesis and spinal stenosis. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Spinal decompression and posterolateral arthrodesis have been s...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Previous studies have shown that axial loading can narrow the spinal canal. However, the clinical significance is unclear. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the narrowing of the spinal canal with axial loading during MR imaging could influence treatment decision for spinal stenosis. METHODS Two hundred patients with clinical symptoms of spinal stenosis ...

BACKGROUND There are few reports regarding surgical management of multilevel cervical spinal stenosis with spinal cord injury. Our purpose is to evaluate the safety and feasibility of open-door expansive laminoplasty in combination with transpedicular screw fixation for the treatment of multilevel cervical spinal stenosis and spinal cord injury in the trauma population. METHODS This was a ret...

Review scope Included studies compared epidural corticosteroid injections with placebo (administration of an inert or innocuous substance into the epidural space or adjacent spinal tissue) in patients with sciatica. Studies had to report ≥ 1 of overall pain intensity, leg pain intensity, back pain intensity, or disability status. Corticosteroids could be delivered into the epidural space by any...

BACKGROUND The relationship between objective measurements and subjective symptoms of patients with spinal stenosis and the degree of narrowing of the spinal canal is not clear. The purpose of this study was to evaluate patients undergoing surgery for lumbar spinal stenosis and intermittent neurogenic claudication with functional testing, quantitative imaging, and patient self-assessment. MET...

BACKGROUND One of the characteristics of spinal stenosis is elastin degradation and fibrosis of the extracellular matrix of the ligamentum flavum. However, there have been no investigations to determine which biochemical factors cause these histologic changes. So we performed the current study to investigate the hypothesis that matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), which possess the ability to caus...