In 1960, the author´s clinical experience in a radical method of treatment of tuberculosis of the lumbar spine was presented to the Annual Scientific Conference of -Korean Orthopedic Association. In the present paper, 14 additional cases receiving radical treatment of tuberculosis-of -the cervical and the thoracic spine are reviewed. The facts which author presented and emphasized in his previous paper-have been reconfirmed. Again, the following findings are emphasized.
1) The approach to the cervical vertebral bodies can be performed without difficulty by retracting the muscles and carotid sheath laterally, and the thyroid, trachea and esophagus medially. For the approach to the thoracic vertebral bodies, the routine thoracotomy procedure is satisfactory. Focal. debridement was performed after a complete exposure of the diseased vertebral bodies. Then fresh bone-iliac bone for the cervical bodies and rib for the thoracic bodies was grafted.. Except =for one case of hospital postoperative infection, there were no serious postoperative complications. -
2) With the exception of case no.8 who had had a complete paraplegia preoperatively, and a hospital infection postoperatively, the patients began ambulation on the eleventh to seventeenth postoperative day. Immobilization of the spine with the Knight spinal brace or a plaster of paris jacket was continued for two to six months postoperatively. During an observation -period averaging -of =thirteen months, the end results have been satisfactory.
3) In the treatment of tuberculosis of -the spine, problems of the differential diagnosis, the extent of-the tuberculous involvement, the existence or extent of the paravertebral abscess and of the sequestrum must be reconsidered. Always the preoperative clinical and roentgenographic findings have been far less than the pathology noted directly at surgery.
4) This paper confirms -the previous impression that a comparatively short period e.g. a little more than .3 months -in average, of postoperative immobilization of the spine does not present any problem in -bone -graft And: the ?healing.
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