IN PLANNING SPINE OPERATIONS, SURgeons have wide discretion. For pain-related surgery, consensus on indications for specific procedures (eg, decompression alone or decompression plus fusion) is generally lacking despite randomized trials for some condition and procedure combinations. Furthermore, individual surgeon preferences may outweigh patient and disease characteristics in choosing procedu...

Seventeen patients with pathological fractures of the thoracolumbar spine which had not responded to conservative treatment are reported. All had compression of the spinal cord and/or severe pain. All (except one treated by lateral rhachotomy) were treated by anterior decompression followed by stabilisation; when the lesion was below T2 the spine was stabilised anteriorly, and when it was highe...

PURPOSE The lateral transpsoas interbody fusion (LTIF) is an increasingly popular minimally invasive technique for lumbar interbody fusion. Although a posterior approach to the lumbar spine has traditionally been favored for the treatment of canal stenosis and neural foraminal stenosis, a growing body of evidence suggests that indirect decompression of the spinal canal and neural foramen can be...

The halo fixator may be used for the definitive treatment of cervical spine trauma, preoperative reduction in the patient with spinal deformity, and adjunctive postoperative stabilization following cervical spine surgery. Halo fixation decreases cervical motion by 30% to 96%. Absolute contraindications include cranial fracture, infection, and severe soft-tissue injury at the proposed pin sites....

BACKGROUND Approved treatment modalities for the surgical management of lumbar spinal stenosis encompass a variety of direct and indirect methods of decompression, though all have varying degrees of limitations and morbidity which potentially limit the efficacy and durability of the treatment. The coflex(®) interlaminar stabilization implant (Paradigm Spine, New York, NY), examined under a Unit...

INTRODUCTION Thoracic ossification of the ligamentum flavum (TOLF) is a common cause of progressive thoracic myelopathy. Surgical decompression is commonly used to treat TOLF. AIM To evaluate the clinical outcomes of microsurgical decompression of TOLF via a paraspinal approach, using a percutaneous tubular retractor system. MATERIAL AND METHODS First, three-dimensional (3D) image reconstru...

To explore the clinical effect of anterior segmental decompression and interbody fusion in treatment of elderly patients with complex cervical spondylotic myelopathy of three segments or more, 50 patients, with titanium plate internal fixation bone fusion underwent anterior cervical decompression and multi segmental cervical spondylosis, were collected. Parameters of operation time, intraoperat...

RATIONALE Hypertrophy of posterior longitudinal ligament (HPLL) at C1-2 level accompanied with lower cervical spinal stenosis is rare in clinic. No reports have described HPLL at C1-2 level accompanied with lower cervical spinal stenosis treated by posterior decompression, combined with internal fixation in 1 stage. PATIENT CONCERNS A 70-year-old Chinese female complained of numbness and para...

Study Design Case report. Objective The purpose of this report is to discuss the surgical management of lumbar vertebral osteomyelitis with a spinal epidural abscess (SEA) and present a single-stage, posterior-only circumferential decompression and reconstruction with instrumentation using an expandable titanium cage and without segmental nerve root sacrifice as an option in the treatment of th...

PURPOSE Pedicle screw fixation in the upper cervical spine is a difficult and high-risk procedure. The screw is difficult to place rapidly and accurately, and can lead to serious injury of spinal cord or vertebral artery. The aim of this study was to design an individualized 3D printing navigation template for pedicle screw fixation in the upper cervical spine. METHODS Using CT thin slices da...