Use of intrawound vancomycin powder against postoperative infection after spine surgery.

Local application of vancomycin has recently become widely used in spine surgery. However, local application is not included in the indication and has not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Thus, we searched for reports with "intra wound-vancomycin" and "SSI" as keywords in the MEDLINE database, and investigated the efficacy, problems with use, and future prospects based on these reports.

Solitary Spinal Epidural Metastasis from Gastric Cancer.

Solitary epidural space metastasis of a malignant tumor is rare. We encountered a 79-year-old male patient with solitary metastatic epidural tumor who developed paraplegia and dysuria. The patient had undergone total gastrectomy for gastric cancer followed by chemotherapy 8 months priorly.

Evaluation of antimicrobial prophylaxis against postoperative infection after spine surgery: Limit of the first generation cephem.

In our department, first-generation cephem (CEZ) are generally administered for 2 days as antimicrobial prophylaxis (AMP) for spinal surgery. However, the incidence of surgical site infection (SSI) has recently increased, particularly cases involving coagulase-negative Staphylococci (CNS) as an etiologic agent. The objective was to elucidate the problems with the current AMP and the risk factors of SSI through a retrospective investigation of affected cases.

Comparison of the invasiveness of conventional discectomy and microendoscopic discectomy for lumbar disc herniation: Differences in the methods of approach.

Introduction: The aim of this study was to investigate whether differences in the methods of approach to the vertebral arch influence the invasiveness of conventional discectomy and microendoscopic discectomy (MED).

Methods: In this study, 41 Wistar rats were divided into four groups: controls (no surgery) (n = 10), shams (skin incision only) (n = 11), MED (n = 10), and conventional discectomy (n = 10). We performed ethological and blood biochemical examinations for three of the groups, excluding the control group, and a histological examination for three of the groups, excluding the sham group.

Spontaneous symptomatic pseudoarthrosis at the l2-l3 intervertebral space with diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis: a case report.

Pseudoarthrosis at the intervertebral space in patients with ankylosing spondylitis has occasionally been reported, but symptomatic pseudoarthrosis at the intervertebral disc level is rare in patients with diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH). Here, we report a case of symptomatic pseudoarthrosis at the L2-L3 intervertebral space that was diagnosed based on clinical history. We first performed L1-L5 fixation, but back-out of the pedicle screw occurred in the early postoperative phase and may have been caused by a short fixation range and concomitant Parkinson's disease.

Ligamentum flavum haematoma: a report of two cases.

We present 2 cases of ligamentum flavum haematoma causing root compression. Magnetic resonance imaging showed an epidural mass linked to the ligamentum flavum. The mass was isointense in T1-weighted images, and was centrally hyperintense and peripherally hypointense in T2-weighted images.

Improved liver function in patients with liver cirrhosis after autologous bone marrow cell infusion therapy.

We here report nine liver cirrhosis (LC) patients that underwent autologous bone marrow cell infusion (ABMI) from the peripheral vein. Subjects were patients with LC with total bilirubin of less than 3.0 mg/dl, platelet count of more than 5 (10(10)/l), and no viable hepatocellular carcinoma on diagnostic imaging.