The most important predisposing factor for recollapse was pre-operative osteonecrosis. Recollapse was not related to trauma. Osteoporotic vertebral compression fracture with osteonecrosis or pseudoarthrosis has been regarded as a relative indication for PVP; however, the findings of this study suggest that this disease category may be a relative contraindication for PVP.

The thoracic ossification of ligamentum flavum (OLF) is a disease that produces spastic paraparesis, and there are various factors that may affect the surgical outcome of thoracic OLF patients. The authors of this study treated 19 of these thoracic OLF patients from 1998 to 2002, and retrospectively reviewed the patients¢ age, sex, symptom duration, involved disease level, preoperative clinical features, neurological findings, radiological findings, the other combined spinal diseases and the surgical outcomes. There were excellent or good surgical outcomes in 16 patients, but 3 patients did not improve after thoracic OLF surgery: this included 1 patient, whose motor function worsened after decompressive thoracic OLF surgery. The favorable contributing factors of surgical outcome in thoracic OLF are a short preoperative symptom duration, single-level lesion, and unilateral lesion type on CT axial scan. On the contrary, the poor prognostic factors are beak type lesion and intramedullary signal changes on T 2 -weighted sagittal MRI. The complete preoperative evaluation including radiologic findings will provide valuable aid in presuming the surgical outcome for the thoracic OLF patients.Keywords Thoracic Spine AE Stenosis AE Ossification of ligament flavum AE Myelopathy AE Surgical Outcome Eur Spine J (2006) 15: 485-491

In most spinal diseases, including HLD and tumors, prepartum surgical treatment can be safely performed maintaining pregnancy. For patients with progressive neurologic deficit at 34 to 36 weeks gestation or later, spine surgery should be performed following the induction of delivery or a cesarean section, or at the same time.

To develop an injury-prevention program, more solid and comprehensive data need to be collected to identify the risk factors and variables associated with higher incidences of injuries to Asian football players.