Spine
-
Comparative Study
Comparison of the strengths of lumbosacral fixation achieved with techniques using one and two triangulated sacral screws.
The strength of sacral screw fixation achieved with techniques using one sacral screw and two triangulated sacral screws with Chopin block was tested on 10 fresh human sacrum specimens. ⋯ This study showed that fixation with two divergent triangulated screws to the sacrum was significantly stronger than one-screw fixation for lumbosacral fusion. The strength of fixation seems to have a negative correlation with aging.
-
A retrospective clinical and radiographic review. ⋯ The data in the current study support the authors' belief that with current surgical techniques and perioperative management in an experienced center, the results for patients undergoing spinal fusion for neuromuscular scoliosis have been improved, and major complications have been minimized.
-
The efficacy of a specially designed mineralized bovine collagen matrix as a carrier for bone marrow stem cells was studied in a rabbit posterolateral spinal fusion model. ⋯ These results show that Healos is an osteoconductive matrix that can be a useful carrier in the biologic and mechanical environment of a posterolateral intertransverse fusion site. In combination with bone marrow, it produces fusion rates that are comparable with those of autologous bone graft. However, it must be combined with an osteoinductive or osteogenic agent to ensure reliable fusion rates and alone cannot produce reliable osteogenesis. The Healos matrix was not compared with other commercially available matrices currently in use. Therefore, the efficacy of Healos relative to these other materials could not be determined.
-
Biography Historical Article
William Jason Mixter (1880-1958). Ushering in the "dynasty of the disc".
William Jason Mixter was born in 1880 and graduated from the Harvard Medical School class of 1906. Like his father, Mixter was a prominent surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and in 1911 the two shared the job of overseeing all neurosurgery at that institution. By the early 1930s, W. ⋯ That article fundamentally changed the popular understanding of sciatica at that time, and for this work Mixter is generally credited by his contemporaries as being the man who best clarified the relation between the intervertebral disc and sciatica. Mixter and Barr's landmark report helped to establish surgery's prominent role in the management of sciatica at the time. Over the next few decades, discectomy surgery increased in popularity tremendously, and some refer to that period as the "dynasty of the disc."