Use of prone position magnetic resonance imaging for detecting the terminal filum in patients with occult tethered cord syndrome.

Object: The pathophysiology of occult tethered cord syndrome (OTCS) with no anatomical evidence of a caudally shifted conus and a normal terminal filum is hard to understand. Therefore, the diagnosis of OTCS is often difficult. The authors hypothesized that the posterior displacement of the terminal filum may become prominent in patients with OCTS who are in a prone position if filum inelasticity exists, and they investigated prone-position MRI findings.

Medium-term clinical results of microsurgical lumbar flavectomy that preserves facet joints in cases of lumbar degenerative spondylolisthesis: comparison of bilateral laminotomy with bilateral decompression by a unilateral approach.

Study Design: A retrospective study of medium-term results.

Objective: To describe a technique for posterior decompression using microsurgical lumbar flavectomy (MLF) without facetectomy, which is based on the anatomic features of the ligamentum flavum, and to examine the clinical outcomes of patients with lumbar spinal spondylolisthesis with lower extremity symptoms rather than low back pain, who underwent this procedure by 2 different approaches.

Summary Of Background Data: Posterior decompression with fusion has been the optimal and standard operative treatment for lumbar degenerative spondylolisthesis.