Preliminary Report of Percutaneous Vertebroplasty for the Treatment of the Burst Fractures with Spinal Canal Encroachment

Vertebroplasty, a surgical procedure developed by Galibert and Deramond in 1987, involves the injection of bone cement into a collapsed vertebral body. The main indications of vertebroplasty have been extended to painful osteoporotic compression fractures, vertebral myelomas, and metastases and so on. Several previous studies have evaluated the radiological changes in vertebral body height, kyphotic angle, and spinal canal diameter after vertebroplasty. However, there are few reports on the changes in the spinal canal of patients with preoperative canal encroachment. Furthermore, because vertebroplasty can aggravate spinal canal encroachment, its use in the treatment of osteoporotic burst fractures accompanied with preoperative canal encroachment remains debatable. Therefore, we evaluated the changes in spinal canal diameter after percutaneous vertebroplasty.