Lumbar stenosis is a well-defined pathologic condition with excellent surgical outcomes. Empiric evidence as well as randomized, prospective trials has demonstrated the superior efficacy of surgery compared to medical management for lumbar stenosis. Traditionally, lumbar stenosis is decompressed with open laminectomies. This involves removal of the spinous process, lamina, and the posterior mus...

Background: The syndrome of degenerative lumbar canal stenosis accounts for a large percentage causes low back pain in the elderly worldwide. Surgical management has demonstrated better clinical and radiological results than conservative treatment. It allows adequate decompression thecal sac compressed nerve roots. However, aggressive laminectomy with facetectomy been linked many postoperative ...

In their article in this issue of AJNR, Nowicki and coauthors (1) take as their point of departure the embarrassing fact that we are quite poor at relating the sensory and motor symptoms of spinal stenosis to the radiologic picture of the spinal canal and its foramina. They quote figures of 30% false negatives (ie, pain with no obvious disease), and 20% false positives (ie, asymptomatic disease...

In 139 patients with burst fractures of the thoracic, thoracolumbar or lumbar spine, the least sagittal diameter of the spinal canal at the level of injury was measured by computerised tomography. By multiple logistic regression we investigated the joint correlation of the level of the burst fracture and the percentage of spinal canal stenosis with the probability of an associated neurological ...

Spinal stenosis in either the cervical or lumbar spinal segments is one of the most common indications for spine imaging and intervention, particularly among the elderly. This article examines the pathophysiology and imaging of the corresponding clinical syndromes, cervical spondylotic myelopathy or neurogenic intermittent claudication. The specificity fault of spine imaging is readily evident ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Several studies have been undertaken to validate quantitative methods of evaluating cervical spinal stenosis. This study was performed to assess the degree of interobserver and intraobserver agreement in the qualitative evaluation of cervical spinal stenosis on CT myelograms and MR images. METHODS Cervical MR images and CT myelograms of 38 patients were evaluated retros...

INTRODUCTION By using a combination of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) of the lumbar spine, it is possible to distinguish between spinal stenosis caused by bone compression and specific soft tissue epidural intraspinal lesions that cause localized spinal canal stenosis and neural compression. Examples include facet cysts and yellow ligament hypertrophy. Many of the...