Digital three-dimensional morphology of cervical joint facet in 7-12-year-old children / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Lots of researches by domestic and foreign scholars have confirmed that the asymmetry of facet joint surface or the articular angles might cause the degeneration of the facet joints, and the articular spondylolisthesis. But most of the studies focus on the adult. It has been confirmed that the most common cause of the cervical disease, of the osteoarthritis, of the neurovascular compression or even the paralysis is the pathological changes of facet joint for people as they grow older. There are few studies on the facet joints in children. OBJECTIVE: To explore the cervical joint facet morphology development characteristics and age-related changes by collecting the CT scanning data of cervical vertebrae in children aged 7-12 years old, three-dimensional reconstruction and cervical facet joint morphology measurement and analysis. METHODS: Through collecting the data of multi-layers spiral CT scan of children in the First Affiliated Hospital and Second Affiliated Hospital of Inner Mongolia Medical University and Inner Mongolia International Mongolian Hospital from September 2013 to September 2015, 99 cases of cervical structures were selected. Then DICOM format of original data were imported in Mimics software for three-dimensional reconstruction. Morphological measurement was conducted on the three-dimensional model. The study was approved by the Ethical Committee of Inner Mongolia Medical University on March 11, 2015, approval No. YKD2015049. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: (1) The length of children cervical joint facet was on a rise with age and a decreasing trend with ordinal number of vertebrae. (2) The width of children middle upper cervical joint facet showed “V” type. The width of children lower cervical joint facet increased with the increase of vertebral order. (3) The trend of distance between articular tubercles was “spike” shape. (4) The coronal angle of joint facet presented to be “V” shape. (5) The sagittal angle of joint facet was in inverted “V” shape. (6) In summary, there is no asymmetry of articular process in the morphological characteristics of cervical facet joints in 7-12-year-old children.