تغییرات رادیوگرافیک ستون فقرات کمری و لگن در بیماران با ضایعه نخاعی مزمن

Background: Chronic spinal cord injury has an important role in sensorimotor disor-ders which is associated with many complications and the rate of these complications should be certainly considered. The most important complications are the changes in bones and joints which come with pain and lead to increase in their motor disability. In this paper, the radiographic images were studied and the ossifications of spinal cord and pelvis were described and also the type of changes and their prevalence was eval-uated. Methods: In this study, 500 patients and veterans with spinal cord injuries who were hospitalized in Khatam-Ol-Anbia Hospital were examined. The spinal and pelvis x-ray of the patients have been studied for spinal cord ossification, the hip joint narrowing, sacroiliitis, heterotopic ossification, osteophyte and the presence of quiver in the graph. Results: Among the patients, 485 cases were males and 15 cases were females, the av-erage age was 50.26 and the mean duration of injury was 26 years. Four hundred and forty six patients were paraplegic and 54 cases were quadriplegic. There was a signifi-cant relationship between age and the number of involved vertebrae (P= 0.000), psori-asis like ossifications (P= 0.048) and large osteophytes (P= 0.037), also between the du-ration of the injury and the hip joint narrowing (P= 0.008), the number of involved ver-tebrae (P= 0.008). In addition the presence of shrapnel in the graph is correlated with large osteophytes and more heterotopic ossification. Conclusion: The most frequent cause of chronic spinal injuries of our patients has been the injury by quiver, it seems our results may not be extended to all patients with spinal cord injury. In lumbar spine radiography of the patients, osteophytes, the quiver and psoriasis like ossifications were mostly seen. In the pelvis x-rays the most changes were hip joint narrowing, sacroiliitis and the heterotopic ossification.