“Osteoporotic fracture of the thoracolumbar spine”

  Osteoporosis, as the name implies, is a decrease in the density of bone, as if the wood has decayed, with many pores in the bones, making the bone toughness and strength decrease and bone quality decrease.  Bone fragility increases and fractures easily, especially in the thoracolumbar spine, femoral neck, and upper limbs (wrists). Especially in the thoracolumbar spine, the fracture can occur with a fall (common fall with the hip on the ground), a slight external force (clinically seen: carrying flower pots, bending over to retrieve objects, twisting the waist, violent coughing, etc.) or no obvious cause, and the vertebrae will be significantly compressed and flattened in severe cases, while in mild cases there is no obvious change in the shape of the vertebrae, as if the beam of the house is not broken, but the rafters are broken, and pain can occur at the site of the fracture.  The clinical manifestation is sudden pain, which is not taken seriously because most of the patients can still move around and do not combine radiating pain and numbness of the lower limbs. However, the pain generally has remarkable characteristics: if the patient does not move, the pain is not obvious, but if the position changes, such as the moment of getting up, turning over, etc., there is a significant increase in pain, and some of them even show cramp-like pain.   Diagnosis: Elderly people with sudden low back pain with the above characteristics should be highly suspected of having a fresh fracture. However, due to the low sensitivity and accuracy of X-rays, it is sometimes difficult to clearly identify the presence or absence of vertebral fractures or to distinguish whether the fracture is fresh or old. Magnetic resonance is sensitive to changes in vertebral bone marrow signals and can accurately determine the location and number of old and new fractures and freshly injured vertebrae, so the best examination method is magnetic resonance.  In the outpatient clinic, it is common for patients to come to the emergency room because of back pain, but there is no obvious abnormality after the film, or some suggest that there is a vertebral compression change, but it is not clear whether there is a fresh fracture and the pain is still unbearable after going home and coming to the clinic again, and the MRI examination is done to make it clear.  Treatment: Once it is clear that there is a fresh fracture, there are two types of treatment: one is conservative treatment: bed rest, no sitting or standing, to prevent the fracture from worsening. However, with long-term bed rest, both lower limbs and trunk bones are in a completely non-weight-bearing state, which puts the bones in a no-load, no-stress stimulation state, resulting in a disruption of the normal metabolic state of bone and a decrease in bone formation, while osteoclasts are relatively active, with osteocalcinolysis and increased urinary calcium excretion, thus reducing the strength of bone even more.  Experimentally, it is proved that in normal people who are absolutely bedridden for 1 week, urinary calcium increases significantly, and the symptoms of generalized bone pain can appear in the second week. Especially for the elderly, osteoporosis is more serious, and it is easy to cause multiple repetitive fractures, and also easy to cause the decompensation of various organs, other complications such as pulmonary infection, urinary tract infection, deep vein thrombosis of lower limbs, decubitus ulcers and other complications, which even lead to death in serious cases.  Secondly, minimally invasive treatment: non-invasive-injection therapy: that is, percutaneous puncture vertebroplasty. This is done by inserting a fine needle under fluoroscopy through the skin and injecting medical bone cement to reset the fracture and stabilize the spine, so as to eliminate pain immediately, get out of bed on the same day, and be discharged from the hospital, so as to avoid long-term bed-ridden complications and improve the quality of life of the elderly.