Thoracic and lumbar fractures “glued” together.

Osteoporotic thoracolumbar compression fracture is a common and frequent disease among the elderly, which often occurs after a fall or a slight sprain, while spontaneous fracture can also occur in patients with severe osteoporosis without trauma. The disease is characterized by severe low back pain, lying down can not get up, get up to lie down, turn over difficult, but most patients can still walk a short distance after getting out of bed. Treatment of conservative treatment long-term bed-ridden, many complications, the patient’s pain is great, seriously affecting the quality of life of elderly patients in their later years; surgical risk, due to the presence of osteoporosis internal fixation materials are prone to loosening, cutting, failure. Currently the preferred active treatment, vertebroplasty / vertebral balloon expansion kyphoplasty. This method requires no incision, and only uses a 3-4mm diameter puncture needle to penetrate the fractured vertebrae through a safe channel to inject special glue (bone cement) to bind the fracture, and the patient can immediately relieve pain and move down to the ground, which is safe and effective. Vertebroplasty (PVP) was firstly reported by Galibert in France in 1987, which refers to a minimally invasive spine surgical technique of injecting bone cement into the vertebral body percutaneously through the pedicle root or outside the pedicle root in order to increase the vertebral body’s strength and stability, to prevent collapsing, to alleviate the pain, and even partially to restore the vertebral body’s height. Percutaneous vertebral balloon expansion kyphoplasty In 1999, Mark Reiley, an orthopedic surgeon in Berkeley, USA, developed a kind of expandable expansion balloon, which uses percutaneous puncture of the vertebral body to make the vertebral body reset by expanding the balloon, and forms a space inside the vertebral body, so as to reduce the thrust force required for injecting the bone cement, and the bone cement is not easy to flow in the body, and this kind of improved vertebra is called percutaneous vertebroplasty. This improved vertebroplasty is called percutaneous vertebral balloon dilatation kyphoplasty.