Diagnostic nerve blocks: The popularity of neural blockade as a diagnostic tool in painful conditions, especially in the spine, is due to features like the unspecific character of spinal pain, the irrelevance of radiological findings and the purely subjective character of pain. It is said that apart from specific causes of pain and clear radicular involvement with obvious neurological deficits ...

BACKGROUND Radiofrequency neurolysis is a common technique used in the treatment of chronic pain, particularly facet (zygapophyseal joint) arthralgia. A needle-like cannula is insulated except for the exposed active tip, which is positioned as parallel and adjacent as possible to the targeted nerve branch. Via an inserted probe connected to a radiofrequency generator, energy flowing from the ti...

OBJECTIVE This study was conducted to discuss the treatment and management of a patient presenting with acute idiopathic costochondritis. CASE 64 year old male patient presenting with acute anterior chest pain of one week duration. TREATMENT High-velocity low-amplitude thrust manipulation was used to the zygapophyseal joints of the thoracic spine, costotransverse, and costochondral joints i...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the degree of ossification and the frequency of ankylosis between the atlas and the dens of the axis in patients with longstanding ankylosing spondylitis (AS), to assess radiological involvement of the cervical spine, and to determine their correlations with structural severity and clinical variables, including neurological abnormalities. METHODS In 61 AS patients wit...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of thoracic thrust manipulation vs thoracic non–thrust mobilization in patients with bilateral chronic mechanical neck pain on pressure pain sensitivity and neck pain intensity. Methods: Fifty-two patients (58% were female) were randomly assigned to a thoracic spine thrust manipulation group or of thoracic non–thrust mobilization g...

A review of the imaging features of normal and degenerative anatomy of the spine on medical imaging studies shows features that have been largely overlooked or poorly understood by the imaging community in recent years. The imaging methods reviewed included computed tomography (CT) with multiplanar reconstructions and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A routine part of the MRI examination inclu...

the rank-k numerical range has a close connection to the construction of quantum error correction code for a noisy quantum channel. for noisy quantum channel, a quantum error correcting code of dimension k exists if and only if the associated joint rank-k numerical range is non-empty. in this paper the notion of joint rank-k numerical range is generalized and some statements of [2011, generaliz...

The role of inflammation in vertebral manifestations of ankylosing spondylitis has been controversial [1-5]. Inflammation has been interpreted as the source of the edema recognized in the vertebral [611] centra of some individuals with ankylosing spondylitis [12,13]. However, most syndesmophytes appear at sites without apparent inflammation and not all inflammatory lesions lead to syndesmophyte...