Osteoblastoma

Osteoblastoma of the Third Cervical Vertebra in a 16-Year-Old Boy: Case Report and Review of the Literature

“…Although benign cervical illnesses and neoplasms presenting with neck pain can occur at any age in the pediatric population [1,2,3,4,5], the differential diagnosis of intractable neck pain should include both the primary osseous and the secondary or metastatic tumors of the spine. Among the benign primary cervical spine lesions, osteoblastomas and osteoid osteomas are relatively rare tumors [1,3,4,6,7,8,9]. Twenty percent of all osteoid osteomas and 40% of osteoblastomas occur in the spine [3,4,6,7].…”

“…Among the benign primary cervical spine lesions, osteoblastomas and osteoid osteomas are relatively rare tumors [1,3,4,6,7,8,9]. Twenty percent of all osteoid osteomas and 40% of osteoblastomas occur in the spine [3,4,6,7]. Interestingly enough, 90% of osteoblastomas present before the age of 30, with an average age of 20.4 years and a range of 6 months to 75 years [3,4,6,8,10].…”

“…Twenty percent of all osteoid osteomas and 40% of osteoblastomas occur in the spine [3,4,6,7]. Interestingly enough, 90% of osteoblastomas present before the age of 30, with an average age of 20.4 years and a range of 6 months to 75 years [3,4,6,8,10]. Males are predominantly affected, with a ratio of 1.5–3.0 to 1 [1,2,3,6,11].…”

“…Interestingly enough, 90% of osteoblastomas present before the age of 30, with an average age of 20.4 years and a range of 6 months to 75 years [3,4,6,8,10]. Males are predominantly affected, with a ratio of 1.5–3.0 to 1 [1,2,3,6,11]. A search of the literature was performed using the www.pubmed.gov search machine of the NCBI US Library of Medicine and Embase, using the keywords osteoblastoma , third cervical vertebra (C3) , pediatric spine and primary cervical spine tumor followed by ‘hand search’ of all the available references.…”

“…A search of the literature was performed using the www.pubmed.gov search machine of the NCBI US Library of Medicine and Embase, using the keywords osteoblastoma , third cervical vertebra (C3) , pediatric spine and primary cervical spine tumor followed by ‘hand search’ of all the available references. Several cases of osteoblastoma of the cervical vertebrae have been reported and different aspects of their management have been discussed in the available reported clinical series [2,3,5,6,7,8,9,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19], but interestingly enough, we could find only 2 cases occurring in C3 [cf. [1], cases 15 and 26].…”