Complications in the management of Charcot spinal arthropathy.

Charcot spinal arthropathy is a relatively rare, destructive process characterized by a cycle of progressive deformity, destruction, and worsening instability as a result of repetitive trauma and inflammation. It may result from nontraumatic as well as traumatic causes. Historically, patients with severe symptomatic instability have been successfully treated with combined anterior and posterior fusion techniques.

All-terrain vehicles and associated spinal injuries.

Study Design: Case cohort.

Objective: To illuminate factors associated with all-terrain vehicle (ATV) injuries and injury morphology.

Summary Of Background Data: Traditionally thought of as safe, injuries associated with ATVs can be severe and life threatening.

Implants for total hip arthroplasty.

This article is a comprehensive review of the published literature on total hip replacement design. It seeks to provide a nonbiased view of the technology related to total hip implants and bearing surfaces. Implant designs and fixation methods are discussed with summaries of their respective long-term outcome studies.

Criteria used by medical students to rank orthopedic surgery residency programs.

Residency positions orthopedic surgery continue to be highly sought after. There is no published report of the criteria that candidates use to evaluate prospective orthopedic surgery programs. A survey, created to evaluate what these candidates value in a residency program, was sent to all current orthopedic surgery postgraduate year 1 and year 2 residents through their prospective program directors.

"Normal" prevertebral soft tissue swelling following elective anterior cervical decompression and fusion.

Introduction: Prevertebral soft tissue swelling (PSTS) has been evaluated in the setting of traumatic cervical spine injuries. However, no study to date has quantified the PSTS following elective anterior cervical decompression and fusion or the time course to resolution of that swelling.

Methods: From May 2002 to May 2005 the senior author performed 193 elective 1- or 2-level anterior cervical decompression and fusions.

Reliability of a novel classification system for thoracolumbar injuries: the Thoracolumbar Injury Severity Score.

Study Design: Prospective study of 5 spine surgeons rating 71 clinical cases of thoracolumbar spinal injuries using the Thoracolumbar Injury Severity Score (TLISS) and then re-rating the cases in a different order 1 month later.

Objective: To determine the reliability of the TLISS system.

Summary Of Background Data: The TLISS is a recently introduced classification system for thoracolumbar spinal column injures designed to simplify injury classification and facilitate treatment decision making.