Senile ankylosing hyperostosis of the spine.

Our attention has been drawn to an ankylosing disease of the spine developing in old people, with a painless onset and clinical, pathological, and radiological features distinguishing it from ankylosing spondylitis. Some descriptions of anatomical specimens in the literature seem similar to those we have found, but no clinical or radiological studies on this subject have been published. Leri (1904) describes pathological changes in the spine of a patient suffering from a condition to which Marie and Astie (1897) gave the rather unsatisfactory name of " heredo-traumatic kyphosis of Bechterew ", and these coincide with our observations; but in Leri's case the patient, an old man, had an angular kyphosis of the Kummel-Verneuil type consequent upon a fall. Meyer and Forster (1938) have described a similar anatomical condition under the name of "moniliform hyperostosis " affecting the right side of the dorsal spine. Oppenheimer (1942) noticed some ossification of vertebral ligaments in old people without involvement of the joint facets. These patients had adequate vertebral mobility and no symptoms. He considered that these features belonged to the type of ossification associated with ankylosing spondylitis. Lacapere (1949) in his study of osteophytosis of the spine in dried bones often mentions outgrowths which he calls " melorheostosis of the spine ", a term that may lead to confusion with the disease described under this name by Leri. The anatomical description given by Lacapere coincides roughly with those of the other writers and also with that here presented. Present Investigations