Vertebral compression fractures affect nearly 150,000 Taiwanese a year, but less than 5 percent of sufferers seek immediate treatment, despite the excruciating pain and the potential risk of spinal deformity that accompanies the injury, a neurosurgeon said yesterday.
Taipei Medical University Hospital’s Division of Neurosurgery chairman Chiang Yung-hsiao (蔣永孝) said elderly people are particularly vulnerable to the fracture due to reduced bone mineral density.
“Compression fractures are mainly caused by accidents, such as car crashes, tripping and falling down. There have also been incidences of elderly people with severe osteoporosis suffering a spinal fracture following a coughing fit,” Chiang said.
If a fracture occurs in the middle region of the spine, such as near the 11th and 12th thoracic vertebrae, or the first and second lumbar vertebrae, the spine could bend forward or backward resulting in a “hunchback” appearance, Chiang said, creating severe pain and a great impediment to daily life.
Chiang said that traditional treatment requires internal fixation of adjacent vertebral bodies with nails to hold the spinal bones in the correct position, a procedure that takes up to two months to heal and can greatly affect spinal flexibility.
The disadvantages of the surgery prompted Chiang to introduce a more advanced procedure, in which a tiny titanium device, called a Spine Jack, is inserted into the broken vertebrae via a narrow tube to restore vertebral height before bone cement is injected to fix it in place.
“Unlike the traditional approach, the Spine Jack procedure takes only an hour and allows the patient to regain full mobility two days after surgery,” Chiang said.
Chiang said he has treated a total of 33 patients suffering from spinal fractures using the procedure, 92.5 percent of whom said they would recommend the procedure to people with similar injuries and 90 percent of whom said they would choose the procedure again should they suffer another spinal fracture.
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