J Korean Soc Spine Surg.  2005 Sep;12(3):206-213. 10.4184/jkss.2005.12.3.206.

Multiple Spine Fractures of Young Adult (Over 3 Vertebrae)

Affiliations
  • 1Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital, College of Medicine, Hallym University Seoul, Korea. oskdj@hallym.or.kr

Abstract

STUDY DESIGN: A retrospective study.
OBJECTIVES
To analyze the mode of injury, associated lesions, time of injury, and the checking times of MRI/CT and Bone scans in multiple spine fractures SUMMARY OF LITERATURE REVIEW: CT was predominantly used to discover and identify the fracture levels of the spine. However, fracture level identification in the entire spine was limited. CT, MRI and Bone scans were used for diagnosing multiple spine fractures.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Between 1999 and 2004, 12 patients who had more than level 3 spine fractures were studied. The mode of injury, associated lesions, time of injury, and checking times of MRI/CT and Bone scans were analyzed.
RESULTS
The causes of the spinal injuries were from a fall from height, from traffic accidents and from multi-complex forced trauma in 7, 4 and 1 cases, respectively. Most cases had no severe associated lesions. The accuracy of the plain roentgenograms was 26% and that of CT was 35.3%, and the average checking time was 1.5 days. The accuracy of MRI was 100% and the average checking time was 4.3 days. The accuracy of the bone scans was 100%, and the average checking time was 11.7 days. The fracture patterns consisted of 37, 7, 3 and 3 non-compression (74%), compression (14%), burst (6%) and fracture-dislocation types (6%), respectively. The major treatment methods used with these patients were conservative. The treatment methods in 4 cases were with the use posterior instrumentation.
CONCLUSIONS
MRI produced more accurate and faster results than the other methods of detection. The accuracy of the plain roentgenograms was 26%, which was relatively inaccurate. Therefore, if the patient complains of multiple back pains, the surgeon must check other diagnostic tools.

Keyword

Multiple spine fracture; Bone scan; CT; MRI

MeSH Terms

Accidents, Traffic
Back Pain
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Retrospective Studies
Spinal Injuries
Spine*
Young Adult*

Figure

  • Fig. 1. T1 weighted sagittal MRI showing that spine of 15 year-old woman is noncontiguous 7 level fractures by traffic accidents.

  • Fig. 2. 44 year-old man with noncontiguous 7 level fractures by fall from height.


Cited by  1 articles

Multiple Non-contiguous Spine Fractures with Concomitant Injuries - A Case Report -
Soo Uk Chae, Yeung Jin Kim, Jung Hwan Yang, Ji Wan Lee, Jae In Park
J Korean Fract Soc. 2011;24(3):267-270.    doi: 10.12671/jkfs.2011.24.3.267.


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