Comparison of four surgical techniques in the management of tuberculous spondylitis of the thoracic spine in adults

Abstract

Objective: To compare the efficiency of the 4 most used surgical techniques for the management of tuberculous spondylitis. Method: Retrospective study in which adult patients with a confirmed diagnosis of tuberculous spondylitis, involvement of two vertebral levels or less, and without severe vertebral deformity were included. The medical records, imaging studies, and demographic data of the operated patients were collected and reviewed to retrospectively analyze the clinical results of each group. The primary variables were cure of infection, spinal fusion, and complications. The secondary variables included intraoperative bleeding, hospital stay, and surgical time. Results: There were no significant differences (p ≥ 0.05) in most of the variables analyzed; however, there were (p ≤ 0.001) regarding bleeding, surgical time, hospital stay and complications between the groups analyzed, with a lower result in all cases for the single posterior approach. Conclusions: The single posterior approach obtained a clinical efficacy similar to the rest of the approaches in terms of eradication of the infection and vertebral fusion, however, it was associated with less surgical invasion (surgical time and bleeding), a shorter hospital stay and complications.