The earliest reported use of electrical stimulation to improve the efficacy of spinal fusion was over a quarter of a century ago. At that time, Dwyer et al. were the first to show that adjunctive electrical stimulation improved the fusion rate of a diagnostically varied group of patients undergoing both anterior and posterior spinal fusion. Over the next decade, only two additional studies exam...

Surgical spinal fusion is a procedure where two or more of the vertebrae of the spine are “fused” together in an attempt to achieve solid arthrodesis and to potentially eliminate painful movement or to correct deformity. The purpose of the spinal hardware is to provide additional spinal stability while helping the fusion set up. The first successful surgical fusion procedures were described by ...

There has been a conscious effort to address osteoporosis in the aging population. As bisphosphonate and intermittent parathyroid hormone (PTH) therapy become more widely prescribed to treat osteoporosis, it is important to understand their effects on other physiologic processes, particularly the impact on spinal fusion. Despite early animal model studies and more recent clinical studies, the i...

STUDY DESIGN Epidemiological study using national administrative data. OBJECTIVE To provide a complete analysis of national trends in spinal fusion from 1998 to 2008 and compare with trends in laminectomy, hip replacement, knee arthroplasty, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty, and coronary artery bypass graft. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Previous studies have reported a rapid inc...

in pott’s disease (tuberculous spondylitis), involvement of two separate levels of spine is rare. attention to stability of spine prevents delayed progressive kyphosis. a 12-year-old girl presented with neck pain, tenderness and swelling imaging showed cl—c2 and t9-t10 and destruction. mild spastic paraparesis was noticed. preoperative diagnosis was metastasis. t9, t10 and t11 laminectomy and c...

Spinal fusion will continue to be an important part of the surgical treatment of spinal pathology for the foreseeable future. Traditional challenges to successful spinal fusion surgery include autograft donor site morbidity and pseudoarthrosis. Recent advances in the understanding of the biology of bone formation have allowed the development of therapeutic biologics. Although recombinant bone m...

STUDY DESIGN Systematic review. OBJECTIVE To identify whether there is an advantage to instrumented or noninstrumented spinal fusion over decompression alone for patients with degenerative lumbar spondylolisthesis. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA The operative management of degenerative spondylolisthesis includes spinal decompression with or without instrumented or noninstrumented spinal fusion....

OBJECTIVE Life expectancy for humans has increased dramatically and with this there has been a considerable increase in the number of patients suffering from lumbar spine disease. Symptomatic lumbar spinal disease should be treated, even in the elderly, and surgical procedures such as fusion surgery are needed for moderate to severe lumbar spinal disease. However, various perioperative complica...

context scoliosis is a three-dimensional deformity of the spine and trunk which includes lateral deviation, rotation, and a disturbance of the sagittal profile. treatment is indicated for scoliosis because it may lead to negative consequences with regard to the quality of life and other health issues for some patients. the purpose of this review was to gather current, up-to-date information, an...

Background Early-onset scoliosis, when left untreated, leads to severe deformity. Until the last decade, treatment of progressive curves in young children often consisted of definitive spinal fusion. The recognition of thoracic insufficiency syndrome associated with definitive early fusion has led to the development of new surgical techniques developed to preserve spinal and thoracic growth in ...