Curēus
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A small subset of patients who underwent successful vertebral compression fracture (VCF) augmentation procedures may develop subsequent pain requiring spinal injections. In a retrospective analysis, we determined whether the pain was related to the original fracture site or to another area within the lumbar or thoracic spine. The pain occurred either at the same/adjacent level and/or non-adjacent level as the VCF. Interventional treatments primarily targeted the facet joints, specifically in the form of facet joint blocks and/or radiofrequency ablation to the medial branches. The pattern of facet injections relative to the original fracture level was studied. Additionally, the elapsed time between the vertebral augmentation and the subsequent interventional blocks was also evaluated. ⋯ Pain after a successful vertebral augmentation is typically non-acute (i.e., beyond six weeks). Mechanisms other than the primary VCF are usually responsible for non-adjacent level pain, which are present a majority of the time on reviewing the patients' diagnostic studies. These mechanisms usually take many weeks to develop and subsequently elicit pain that requires additional interventional pain procedures. In our study, the pain is usually related to the pre-existing degenerative spondylosis and stenosis rather than the fracture site. This study shows that the facet joints in closely related lumbar degenerative changes are the cause of pain in this patient group. These procedures should be explored with pain after vertebral augmentation, especially in those patients with known or suspected spinal degeneration and/or poor biomechanics.
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We report three patients with corneal bee sting at our tertiary care center in a three-year period starting from 2014 to 2016. All patients sustained a bee sting injury to the cornea. All patients received early preoperative topical antibiotics, topical cycloplegic and intensive topical steroids. However, the timing of the initial presentation, the duration, and the location of the retained stinger differed in each case leading to different postsurgical outcomes.
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Adventure sports events consist of a combination of two or more endurance disciplines, such as orienteering, running, and rock climbing, that range from a day's to a week's duration. No studies have examined acute kidney injury (AKI) in adventure sports athletes. ⋯ Acute kidney injury was observed in the majority of the Endeavor Team Challenge adventure racers, similar to what has been observed in multistage ultramarathons, and greater than after standard marathons and single-stage ultramarathons.
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In reviewing a larger group of osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures (VCFs), we found that the overall incidence of sacral insufficiency fractures (SIFs) is higher than commonly reported values. This is especially seen in patients with previous or concurrent lumbar VCFs and also in a subgroup that had lumbar stenosis or hip arthroplasty. The altered biomechanics due to associated lumbar stenosis or hip arthroplasty lead to increased mechanical stress on already weakened and deficient sacral alae, which are more vulnerable to osteoporotic weakening than other parts of the sacrum. ⋯ Sacral insufficiency fractures are a frequent cause of both acute and chronic pain; however, they are often missed by the majority of physicians. The frequency of undetected sacral fractures is high. This is due to a number of potential pitfalls, which include both subjective and objective reasons: the patient presenting with vague symptoms, the physician only performing a physical examination of the lumbar spine, and the physician ordering the inadequate standard lumbosacral radiographs, computed tomography (CT), or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), as well as automatically relating the pain and other symptoms to preexisting MRI findings that are very commonly found in the elderly population. All of these pitfalls lead to SIFs being overlooked.