Although lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) occurs almost universally with aging, little is known regarding its actual prevalence and relationships to chronic low back pain (CLBP) in the general population. The presence of CLBP in subjects with LSS may have negative impacts on spinal alignment and mobility. This study evaluated the prevalence of LSS using a self-administered, self-reported history qu...

Objectives Global sagittal spinal imbalance leads to compensatory pelvic retroversion and femoral flexion that is far from economical standing posture. Recent reports showed spinal instrumentation surgery provided remarkable restoration of spinal alignment and better health-related quality of life (HRQOL) by adult spinal deformity surgery. However, there is a few previous reports about the impa...

The goal of any ambulatory patient is to maintain a horizontal gaze with the least amount of energy expenditure. With progressive deformity, and in particular sagittal malalignment, significant compensatory mechanisms must be used to achieve this goal. Each pelvis dictates the amount of lumbar lordosis required through its morphometric parameter pelvic incidence. The pelvis may compensate for d...

Indirect decompression in spinal surgery means decompression of spinal nerve tissues, such as spinal cord and nerve, without resecting the compressing tissue. Indirect spinal decompression procedures largely can be divided into segmental procedures and global spinal alignment procedures. Segmental procedures are mainly performed by the distraction between two vertebrae, which lead to the openin...

The prevalence of patients with adult spinal deformity (ASD) has been reported as high as 68%. ASD often leads to significant pain and disability. Recent emphasis has been placed on sagittal plane balance and restoring normal sagittal alignment with regards to the three dimensional deformity of ASD. Optimal sagittal alignment has been known to increase spinal biomechanical efficiency, reduce en...

PURPOSE Laminectomy is generally the treatment of choice for removal of spinal tumors. However, it has been shown that laminectomy may cause instability due to damage of posterior elements of the spinal column, which may induce subsequent kyphosis in the future. Therefore, to reduce the risk of deformity and spinal instability after laminectomy, hemilaminectomy has been used. However, the mediu...

Previous studies evaluated various risk factors for knee OA; however, no study has examined the association between spinal factors, such as total spinal alignment and spinal range of motion (ROM), with knee OA. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of spinal factors including total spinal alignment and spinal ROM on knee OA in community-living elderly subjects. A total of 170 s...

Background This study was designed as an investigation in a local population to assess the relation between the knee joint and spinal alignment in a population-based study using the SpinalMouse. Methods Medical check-ups were conducted for residents of a mountain village in Japan. The study population included 107 men and 157 women (528 knees) with a mean age of 71.1 ± 6.8 years (range, 60-87...