[The narrow lumbar canal: 53 operated cases (author's transl)].

These 53 operated patients were divided into 2 groups: 29 had an intermittent claudication as Verbiest first described it soon as 1949, whereas 24 had permanent radicular pain in legs as Epstein emphasized it. We think emulsified Duroliopaque myelography to be the best investigation to make sure the diagnosis and to forecast the operative tactics: we gave up Dimer X myelography which occasioned serious complications in 2 cases and gas myelography which seems to us inadequate to this radicular pathology. Total-Body Scanner is rather an elegant method but a discontinuous one. The radiographic and operative findings have shown the stenosis of the lumbar canal to be congenital in 5 cases, development in 20 cases, degenerative in 27 cases (with 15 pseudo-spondylolisthesis) and tabetic in one case. A disc herniation was found in 25 cases over 53. The extent of the bone resection has been in relation with clinical picture, myelography and mainly operative findings, aiming at a "cut-to-measure costum". In every case the initial laminectomy was made easier by trenching the thickened laminae on each side of the spinal process prior to remove it. Only soft disc hernations were removed; the dura was never opened; no vertebral fusion was performed; for 2 years we have tried to avoid the "laminectomy membrane" by interposing an autogenous fat and aponevrotic graft between the dura and the overlying paraspinal muscles. The operative results are satisfactory with 75% of excellent and good; they are much better in patients with intermittent claudication than in those with permanent radicular pain. It is a question of functional surgery in one case, of pain surgery in the other. The major trick seems to us to be that of the associated disc hernation with the risk of missing the narrow canal.