Femoral nerve palsy following mini-open extraperitoneal lumbar approach: report of three cases and cadaveric mechanical study.

Anterior extraperitoneal exposures to the lumbar spine are being increasingly used owing to the expanding use of novel technologies to treat degenerative disc disease. Lumbar plexus injuries are potential, albeit uncommon, complications of such exposures and can lead to significant perioperative morbidity. In this report, we present three patients with thoracolumbar fractures who sustained isolated femoral nerve palsies after a mini-open extraperitoneal approach to the midlumbar spine was undertaken to perform a partial corpectomy.

Long-term control of vestibular schwannoma after a translabyrinthine complete removal.

Objective: The goal of this study was to determine the rate of recurrent vestibular schwannoma after a total removal via the translabyrinthine approach.

Patients: Between 1973 and 1995, 346 patients were operated on by a translabyrinthine approach. Ninety-one patients were included in a retrospective study for follow-up of 5 years or longer.

Cervical venous organization in the transverse foramen.

The most widely accepted description of venous anatomy in the transverse foramen involves the presence of one or two veins running along and parallel to the external side of the vertebral artery. For most surgeons, the vertebral artery is surrounded by a rete of veins which is continous with the wide sinusoids which surround the thecal sac (internal vertebral venous plexus). The goal of this study was to ascertain the exact structure of the venous system in the transverse canal by micro dissection and histology.

[The Bryan cervical disc prosthesis. Preliminary clinical experience with nine implants].

Purpose: After an anterior cervical discectomy, immobility at the fused level may increase stress on adjacent disc spaces and causes disc degeneration in 92% of the cases with clinical manifestations in 25.6% of the patients within 10 years. The cervical disk prosthesis may help to prevent this problem.

Morphological cervical disc analysis applied to traumatic and degenerative lesions.

Trauma and degenerative pathologies at the lower cervical spine are different from lumbar spine pathologies. However, the description of cervical discs is classically taught similarly to that of the lumbar discs. Recent studies have raised this issue, and in 1999, Mercer and Bogduk described ventral annulus fibrosus as a crescent-shaped interosseous ligament.