Bone scintigraphy for the diagnosis of the responsible level of osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures in percutaneous balloon kyphoplasty.

OBJECTIVES: This study was to investigate the efficacy of bone scintigraphy in order to diagnose the correct level of vertebral compression fractures (VCF) for the severe back pain before balloon kyphoplasty (BKP) was performed.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: A total of 30 consecutive patients were treated with BKP for 38 times since May 2012. Eleven patients had acute multi-level VCFs. Bone scintigraphy was performed preoperatively except for the first case and the case with a chronic course and the level responsible for the pain was defined with bone scintigraphy. The responsible level of acute single level VCF was easily diagnosed with T1, T2, and fat sat T2 but the responsible level of acute multi-level VCFs was not easily determined. BKP was performed at the most accumulated level on bone scintigraphy and the preoperative and postoperative Visual analogue score (VAS) scores were researched with questionnaire postoperatively.

RESULTS: BKP was effective in relief of pain at the most accumulated level on bone scintigraphy. Preoperative VAS score (average 8.6) was significantly improved at post-ope day1 (average 3.9), at discharge (average 2.4) and at 1 month after discharge (average 2.1). New symptomatic VCFs after the first treatment occurred in 5 patients at an adjacent level in 3 and twice in 2 of 5 and additional BKP was effective in each patient.

CONCLUSIONS: The correct level of symptomatic VCF in the patients with acute multi-level VCFs should be diagnosed to achieve good clinical results. In this study, we showed that bone scintigraphy is very useful in diagnosing the proper level for BKP in addition to CT and MRI.