Distribution of Infections of the Spine According to Level of Lesion

Since Kulowski (1936) drew attention to the more benign forms of the disease, pyogenic infection of the spine has been discussed on a number of occasions. Further accounts must inevitably cover much familiar ground. In this review we have paid most attention to any new feature to emerge and to those aspects that appear to us to merit special consideration. Details made familiar by past descriptions are dealt with more briefly. The review is based on the case histories of twenty-eight patients treated by orthopaedic surgeons in the Bristol area over the last twenty years. Eighteen of the series are personal cases treated by one or other of us during some stage of the illness. The remaining ten case histories are from the records of colleagues. In many cases the diagnosis of a pyogenic origin was based on clinical and radiological findings alone, and, when these were equivocal, on the recovery of the causative organism from the lesion. Doubtful cases were excluded from the series, as also were infants and young children.