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Thoracic and lumbar spine pedicle morphology in Japanese patients

  • Anatomic Bases of Medical, Radiological and Surgical Techniques
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Abstract

Purpose

Pedicle morphology is important for intraoperative surgical anatomy and to define pedicle screw design and parameters. However, differences of pedicle size according to ethnicity and gender are not well studied. The purpose of this study is to investigate morphological characteristics of the pedicle in Japanese patients for determining adequate screw size and optimal surgical planning.

Methods

We investigated thoracic and lumbar pedicle morphology in Japanese patients using computed tomography (CT) measurements and analyzed the standard size of pedicles on upper thoracic to lumbar spine CT images in 227 Japanese patients.

Results

Gender had a larger impact on the shape and size of pedicles than racial differences. In the distribution of pedicle width, we calculated the ratio of values less than 4.5 mm, that in females resulted to be over 30% for the Th3−Th9 segment, and particularly high, above 60% at Th4 and Th5.

Conclusion

Our measurement analysis showed that pedicle morphological parameters in Japanese patients showed tendency to be smaller to those found in other studies, and particularly in female patients, they were statistically significantly smaller. Adequate transpedicular instrumentation for Japanese patients will require smaller size pedicle-related devices that will match our anatomical findings to achieve safe device placement. In addition, serving ethnically non-homogenous patient population can require further to spinal morphometric for precise device selection.

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Data availability

Anonymized data on pedicle measurements can be provided upon reasonable requests from the corresponding author.

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Funding

This research was supported by The Jikei University Research Fund for Graduate Students.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosurgery, The Jikei University School of Medicine, Nishi-Shinbashi 3-25-8, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 105-8461, Japan

    Kohei Morita, Hiroki Ohashi, Daichi Kawamura, Satoshi Tani, Kostadin Karagiozov & Yuichi Murayama

Authors
  1. Kohei Morita
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  2. Hiroki Ohashi
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  3. Daichi Kawamura
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  4. Satoshi Tani
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  5. Kostadin Karagiozov
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  6. Yuichi Murayama
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Contributions

KM project development, data collection and management, data analysis, and manuscript writing. HO project development and manuscript editing. DK project development. ST project development and manuscript editing. KK protocol/project development and manuscript writing/editing. YM project development and manuscript editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kohei Morita.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the article content was composed in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Consent to participate

Patients’ consent was waived for usages of pool data.

Consent for publication

All co-authors have approved the manuscript and agreed with submission.

Ethical approval

All patients’ information is anonymized before being included in the study. We have obtained the approval required by the Ethical commission of our university, as # 32–232(10313).

Informed consent

All patients’ information is anonymized before being included in the study and the study information and contact address are published in the website of our university.

Research involving human and animal participants

Patients’ consent was waived for usages of pool data and the study information and contact address are published in the website of our university.

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Morita, K., Ohashi, H., Kawamura, D. et al. Thoracic and lumbar spine pedicle morphology in Japanese patients. Surg Radiol Anat 43, 833–842 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-021-02707-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-021-02707-8

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