A 53-year-old man had had pain for 2 months in the left lower extremity radiating to the thigh . The pain had begun suddenly after he had lifted a heavy object. Clinical examination showed mildly decreased strength in the left leg, normal reflexes, and decreased sensation to pinprick in the left L3 nerve root distribution. A herniated disk at the L3 level was suspected, and myelography and CT o...

OBJECTIVE To assess treatment with the 5% lidocaine medicated plaster for peripheral neuropathic pain after disk herniation. STUDY DESIGN Case series, single center, retrospective data. PATIENTS AND METHODS Data of 23 patients treated for neuropathic pain with the lidocaine plaster for up to 24 months after a protrusion or prolapse of the cervical, thoracic, or lumbar vertebral disks were r...

The degree of vertebral wedging, a key structural characteristic of spinal curvatures, has recently been found to be negatively related to vertebral cross-sectional area (CSA). The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the relation between vertebral cross-sectional growth and vertebral wedging progression within the immature lumbar spine. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we a...

Plancarte first described a fluoroscopy-guided superior hypogastric plexus block to manage pelvic pain in 1990. Modifications have since been described using different imaging modalities. Ultrasound-guided approach has been described in a clinical outcome study. However, the accuracy of an ultrasound-guided method has never been validated by alternative imaging. We conducted an experiment aimin...

OBJECTIVE Stylohyoid apparatus might be an anatomic region in the cervical spine involved by enthesopathy. The aim of this study was to assess the elongation and/or ossification at the stylohyoid apparatus in the degenerative or inflammatory diseases such as ankylosing spondylitis (AS), psoriatic arthropathy (PsA) and cervical spondyloarthrosis (CS) in which cervical spine involvement can be se...

Facet degeneration can lead to spinal stenosis and instability, and often requires stabilization. Interbody fusion is commonly performed, but it can lead to adjacent-segment disease. Dynamic posterior stabilization was performed using a total facet arthroplasty system. The total facet arthroplasty system was originally intended to restore the natural motion of the posterior stabilizers, but fol...

A 73-year-old woman with suspected infectious diskitis was transferred to our institution. She had a 1 0-year history of ankylosing spondylitis and had had progressive kyphosis with intermittent pain in the thoracolumbar region for almost a year. She had no history of trauma, and her spine was nontender. She was afebrile, and her WBC count was normal. Plain films and tomograms of the thoracolum...

OBJECTIVES To search for imaging characteristics distinguishing patients with successful from those with futile microbiological pathogen detection by CT-guided biopsy in suspected spondylodiscitis. METHODS 34 consecutive patients with suspected spondylodiscitis underwent CT-guided biopsy for pathogen detection. MR-images were assessed for inflammatory infiltration of disks, adjacent vertebrae...

AIM To compare the clinical and radiological outcomes of recurrent disk disease in patients who underwent unilateral and bilateral percutaneous pedicle screw instrumentation with Mis-TLIF. MATERIAL AND METHODS 10 patients treated with unilateral percutaneous instrumentation plus Mis-TLIF formed Group 1 while the other 10 patients treated with bilateral percutaneous instrumentation plus Mis-TL...

One hundred fourteen patients (66 men and 48 women; mean age, 49 years) underwent spine stabilization using a dynamic neutralization system between January 1999 and August 2010 for degenerative disk disease, spinal instability, or spinal stenosis. Mean follow-up was 6.8 years (range, 1-11 years). Seven patients were lost to follow-up. Radiological examination and clinical evaluation, including ...