We report a patient who developed an aortic pseudoaneurysm in the L3-L4 disc space after lumbar disc surgery. The diagnosis was made by MRI and aortography, and repair using a prosthetic graft and anterior fusion was successful. We discuss the predisposing factors, the clinical picture and management of vascular injuries during disc excision.

Although lumbar discectomy is an effective treatment for lumbar disc herniation, complications exist, including postoperative disc height loss, facet joint degeneration, and recurrent disc herniation. To solve these problems, annular closure devices have been utilized in other countries, producing satisfactory results, but there has been no report of annular closure device use in our country. H...

An alternative approach to lumbar fusion surgery is to restore motion to the diseased segment with a disc prosthesis. The goal of the disc prosthesis is to replace the diseased disc while preserving and/or restoring the motion at the operated spinal level. The purpose of this study was to determine the ability of the PRODISC® (Spine Solutions Inc., Paoli, PA) disc prosthesis to restore lumbar s...

BACKGROUND Intervertebral disc herniation is a major cause of low back pain. Several treatment methods are available for lumbar disc herniation including Chemonucleolysis, open surgery, nucleoplasty, laser disc decompression, and intradiscal electrothermal therapy. The high prevalence of lumbar disc herniation necessitates a minimally invasive yet effective treatment method. In this study, we c...

BACKGROUND Many patients with cervical disc disease require leave from work, due to long-lasting, complex symptoms, including chronic pain and reduced levels of physical and psychological function. Surgery on a few segmental levels might be expected to resolve disc-specific pain and reduce neurological deficits, but not the non-specific neck pain and the frequent illness. No study has investiga...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to determine the long-term objective and subjective outcomes of temporomandibular joint (TMJ) implant surgery for the treatment of painful TMJ disc displacement using temporary Silastic (Dow Corning Corporation, Midland, MI), permanent Silastic, or Proplast (Vitek, Houston, TX) implants to replace the disc. These cases were compared with other cases of the ...

AIM Lumbar disc surgery can be performed under general anesthesia or regional anesthesia methods. There are long-standing discussions between neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons and anesthesiologists concerning the use of epidural anesthesia in lumbar surgery. The results of this study's 700 lumbar disc surgery cases operated with epidural anesthesia in our clinic between September 2006 and Dece...

Percutaneous disc surgery, also known as percutaneous discectomy (PD), for herniated nucleus pulposus (HNP) was introduced by Hijikata [1] in Japan. Indeed, as compared with traditional disc surgery such as love’s procedure, PD is minimally invasive since it can be performed under local anesthesia. However, Hijikata’s technique does not use a spinal endoscope; thus, its reliability for the remo...

Iatrogenic vascular injury during lumbar disc surgery is a rare but serious complication. This paper reports a patient who sustained an injury to the iliac artery while undergoing intervertebral disc surgery at the lumbar region. He suffered from massive bleeding and shock. An urgent laparatomy was performed under cardiopulmonary bypass, and the vascular injuries were repaired successfully. Thi...

Symptomatic pneumocephalus is frequently seen after traumatic fracture of the skull base bone. However, it has rarely been reported after spinal surgery and its mechanism has not been fully explained. In this paper, we present a 30 year old male patient who had lumbar discectomy due to a symptomatic midline lumbar disc herniation. He had developed symptomatic pneumocephalus after the lumbar dis...