Myelopathy in Tuberculous Spine Disease

Background The diagnosis of tuberculous spine disease is quite difficult to be established based on clinical data only, moreover if there is no clinical sign of pulmonary TB or gibbus on the spine. Patients with this disease often show skinny appearance and complaining of cold sweat and chronic cough. Therefore, patients with tuberculous spine disease usually come with radiculopathy and/or myelopathy with an advanced disease features shown in diagnostic neurological appearance (MRI), such as destruction of vertebral body and myelum involvement. Until recently, the decompresion and corpectomy with fusion of the spine have become the routine procedures in the management of tuberculous spine disease in the neurosurgery field, besides antituberculous chemotherapy. Tuberculous spine disease Involvement of the spine is the second most common manifestation of tuberculosis infection. At least 3% to 5% patients have spine involvement, 1 and this rate was reported to be higher in developing countries. 2