[The effectiveness of the vertebroplasty in the treatment of the osteoporotic vertebral fractures].

Abstract

We describe the use of vertebroplasty as an effective method to treat osteoporotic vertebral changes. Scant reports in the literature of national expertise and low penetration of this method in Poland has led the author to conduct their own research demonstrating the effectiveness of the method on the basis of treatments performed in Spine Surgery, Oncology Orthopedics and Traumatology Department W. Dega at University Hospital Poznań, Poland and to collect literature describing the topic. 47 patients were enrolled unambiguously confirmed osteoporosis (T score <2.5) on the basis of Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) of the femoral bone. Clinical and radiological examination confirmed the compression fracture of the vertebrae, which was not effectively treated conservatively for at least 6 weeks. The pain was objectified as a major factor in the deteriorating quality of life using an analog scale for assessing pain VAS. To evaluate other clinical indices there were used: scale of disability due to back pain named Ostwestry and scale for assessing quality of life RAND-36 before surgery and long-term testing of the period from 2 months to 4 years after vertebroplasty. On the basis of a comprehensive radiological assessment of the vertebral height and the angle formed by lines of adjacent vertebral median--the angle of lordosis and kyphosis. It was observed a significant reduction in pain of patients, improving quality of life and disability in the testing of the vertebroplasty. Also it was observed a slight reduction of the collapsed vertebrae in some patients immediately after vertebroplasty. Proved the efficiency of the vertebroplasty in preventing further collapsing of futher fractured vertebrae.