Spine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Neck/shoulder exercise for neck pain in air force helicopter pilots: a randomized controlled trial.
The study was a randomized, controlled trial with blinded outcome assessment. A 6-week intervention was followed up directly afterwards and after 12 months. ⋯ A supervised neck/shoulder exercise regimen was effective in reducing neck pain cases in air force helicopter pilots. This was supported by improvement in neck-flexor function postintervention in regimen members. However, no effect emerged for pain-related fear. General strength training before the intervention predicted reduction in prevalence of pain at follow-up.
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Comparison of feasibility and safety of the placement of short and long iliac screws by anatomic and biomechanical evaluations as they apply to lumbo-iliac fixation construct. ⋯ The local stability is rather difficult to be restored to the original levels regardless the length of iliac screws. Obviously, long iliac screws resisted significantly greater axial pullout force. However, under physiologic, torsional, and compressive loading conditions, the mechanical stability of lumbo-pelvic fixation construct with short iliac screws was comparable with that of the long ones. Therefore, the use of short iliac screws, which are only about half the length of the long iliac screws, could reduce the implantation risk without significantly compromising on the stability of the construct.
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Intra-arterial injection in the rat brain: evaluation of steroids used for transforaminal epidurals.
Prospective in vivo experimental animal model. ⋯ This study presents the first in vivo evaluation of intra-arterial steroid injection. Data demonstrate Depo-Medrol, as well as its nonparticulate carrier, and Solu-Medrol can produce significant injury to the blood-brain barrier when injected intra-arterially. These results demonstrate that injury is produced not only by particulate obstruction of the cerebral microvasculature, but also by toxicity of the carrier or steroid (methylprednisolone).
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We conducted a methodologic study. ⋯ We conclude that the 11-item Internal Validity Checklist is associated with effect size in randomized trials of interventions for back pain, and that our data support the use of a sum score of the number of fulfilled items in this list.
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Prospective cohort study. ⋯ One-third of initial bone grafts were found to be resorbed over 5 years and the majority of this resorption was found to occur between 6 months and 1 year after instrumented lumbar/lumbosacral fusion. Furthermore, bone graft volumetric changes were not affected by fusion methods or ranges of fusion, and did not affect clinical or functional outcomes. Although bone graft volume loss was found to increase with initial graft volume, larger bone grafts were found to result in a larger fusion mass.