European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society
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With an official life time of over 5 years, Spine Tango can meanwhile be considered the first international spine registry. In this paper we present an overview of frequency statistics of Spine Tango for demonstrating the genesis of questionnaire development and the constantly increasing activity in the registry. Results from two exemplar studies serve for showing concepts of data analysis applied to a spine registry. ⋯ Current limitations of Spine Tango include the low number and short duration of follow-ups and the lack of sufficiently detailed patient data on subgroup levels. Although the number of participants is steadily growing, no country is yet represented with a sufficient number of hospitals. Nevertheless, the benefits of the project for the whole spine community become increasingly visible.
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Walking is impaired in Pregnancy-related Pelvic girdle Pain (PPP). Walking velocity is reduced, and in postpartum PPP relative phase between horizontal pelvis and thorax rotations was found to be lower at higher velocities, and rotational amplitudes tended to be larger. While attempting to confirm these findings for PPP during pregnancy, we wanted to identify underlying mechanisms. ⋯ The earlier results on postpartum PPP were confirmed for PPP during pregnancy. Spinal rotations remained unaffected, while at higher velocities the peak of thorax rotations occurred earlier in the stride cycle. The latter change may serve to avoid excessive spine rotations caused by the larger segmental rotations.
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Symptomatic spinal epidural lipomatosis (SEL) is very rare and frequently associated to chronic exogenous steroid use, obesity and Cushing syndrome. The idiopathic cases where no identifiable association with SEL are found constitute only 17% of all cases. The usual clinical manifestations of this entity consist of dorsal or lumbar pain with paresthesias and weakness in lower limbs, but acute symptoms of myelopathy are exceptional. ⋯ Urgent surgical decompression was performed in order to relieve the symptoms. Slow but progressive improvement was assessed after surgery. We consider this case to be exceptional due to the needing to perform an urgent decompressive laminectomy to treat a rapidly progressive myelopathy caused by idiopathic SEL.
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Persons with recurrent low back pain (LBP) have been observed to have altered proprioceptive postural control. These patients seem to adopt a body and trunk stiffening strategy and rely more on ankle proprioception to control their posture during quiet upright standing. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of changing postural condition (stable and unstable support surface) on postural stability and proprioceptive postural control strategy in persons with recurrent LBP. ⋯ Persons with recurrent LBP showed significantly different postural control strategies favoring ankle muscle proprioceptive control (ratio closer to 1) instead of paraspinal muscle proprioceptive control (ratio closer to 0) for both standing without foam (ratio ankle muscle/paraspinal muscle control = 0.83) (P < 0.0001) and on foam (ratio ankle muscle/paraspinal muscle control = 0.87; P < 0.0001) compared to healthy individuals (0.67 and 0.46, respectively). It is concluded that young persons with recurrent LBP seem to use the same proprioceptive postural control strategy even in conditions when this ankle strategy is not the most appropriate such as standing on an unstable support surface. The adopted proprioceptive postural control strategy might be effective in simple conditions, however, when used in all postural conditions this could be a mechanism to undue spinal loading, pain and recurrences.
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Comparative Study
Radiographic versus ultrasound evaluation of the Risser Grade in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: a prospective study of 46 patients.
The determination of skeletal age is essential in the management of patients with scoliosis. One of the most frequently used techniques to determine skeletal maturity is the method described by Risser. However, repeated X-ray exposure in the follow-up examinations of scoliosis patients may increase the risk of cancer. ⋯ Overall, the Kappa value showed very good agreement between the two diagnostic methods. Our findings suggest that ultrasound can be applied as an alternative method to X-ray evaluation in Risser Grade determination. It should be routinely used in clinical practice to reduce the patients exposure to radiation.