Significance and Targeting of Small, Central Clefts in Severe Fractures Treated With Vertebroplasty

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Fig 1.
Anteroposterior and lateral plain radiographs during vertebroplasty at L3 show the tip of the 11-gauge cannula in the ventral aspect of the midline of the vertebral body. Barium-opacified cement fills a small ventral cleft and a small portion of the right lateral aspect of the vertebral body, with a small amount of extravasation through the superior endplate.
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Fig 2.
A, Sagittal T2-weighted MR imaging of the lumbar spine shows severe fractures at T12 and L2 with fluid-filled clefts. B, lateral plain radiographs after vertebroplasty show cement-filled clefts corresponding with clefts seen on preprocedure MR imaging shown in A.
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Fig 3.
A, Sagittal T2-weighted MR imaging shows severe fracture at T8 without evidence of a cleft. B and C, Anteroposterior and lateral plain radiographs after vertebroplasty show cement filling a linear cleft.
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Fig 4.
A, Sagittal T2-weighted image shows small cleft within the severe fracture at T12. B, Lateral plain radiograph after vertebroplasty shows filling of a large cleft.

Pain relief after vertebroplasty procedure

	Worse	No Change	Decreased	Completely Improved
Pain at rest
Postoperative (11)	0	1	6	4
1 week (11)	1	1	5	4
1 month (9)	0	1	3	5
6 months (6)	0	0	2	4
Pain with activity
Postoperative (11)	0	0	7	4
1 week (11)	0	0	8	3
1 month (9)	0	0	6	3
6 months (6)	0	0	5	1

Note:—Numbers in parentheses indicate number of patients available at each follow-up time point, and numbers in each column indicate severity of pain on the basis of a semiquantitative pain scale (0–10).