Gout in thoracic spinal canal: a case report and systematic review / 中华骨科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To summarize the clinical manifestations, epidemiological features and progress of diagnosis and treatment of gout in the spinal canal.Methods:A 59-year-old male patient was admitted to the hospital due to back pain, weakness in both lower limbs, hypoaesthesia and feeling of walking and stepping on cotton for more than one month. The preoperative imaging examination showed there were space-occupying lesions in the spinal canal at the T 8, 9 level with severe canal stenosis. The patient underwent posterior T 8, 9 laminectomy decompression, debridement and T 7-T 10 pedicle screw internal fixation under general anesthesia. The thoracic spinal gout was diagnosed by postoperative pathology. Further, the following keywords, "gout", "gout of spinal canal", "gout of spine" and "intraspinal gout", were used to search in the Chinese and English databases. A total of 62 patients with intraspinal gout were retrieved. The age, gender, involved disease, history of gout or hyperuricemia, laboratory indicators and imaging data of 63 patients were collected. Results:A total of 63 patients with intraspinal gout were retrieved. The gender of one patient was unknown. The remaining patients included 54 males (87.1%, 54/62) and 8 females (12.9%, 8/62) with the ratio of male to female 6.75∶1. The average age was 52(35, 67) years (range 20-82 years) and the peak onset period was 60-79 years. Fifty-six cases (88.9%, 56/63) of all patients suffered the disease from one single site of the spine, including 26 cases in the lumbar-sacral (46.4%), 22 cases (39.3%) in the thoracic spine and 8 cases (14.3%) in the cervical spine. However, only 7 patients had the disease at more than two sites at the same time accounting for 11.1% of all patients (7/63). Fifty-three patients (91.4%, 53/58) had a history of hyperuricemia with an average duration of 8.6 years (range 3 months to 28 years). The clinical symptoms of intraspinal gout were not specific. There were 70.5% (43/61) patients had local pain and up to 98.4% (60/61) patients had varying degrees of neurological dysfunction. X-ray examinations often showed no positive results due to technical limitations. Among 41 patients with CT imaging data, 31 cases showed mid-to-high density elliptical or irregular calcifications in the spinal canal and the remaining 10 patients showed medium-low density soft tissue masses. There were 96.2% (51/53) of patients with intraspinal gout showed medium or low signal on T1WI MRI examination but without high signal or low signal on T2WI (40 cases of high signal, 13 cases of high signal or mixed signal). All 63 patients were finally diagnosed by pathological examination and 5 of them with histological features. The main pathological features included foreign body granuloma, red-stained crystal-like deposits in the cytoplasm of foreign body giant cells, birefringent spindle or needle-like crystals under polarized light microscope.Conclusion:Gout in the spinal canal is a rare condition. Dual-energy CT has high sensitivity and specificity in identifying gout and it can provide a more accurate method in diagnosis of spinal gout. However, the final diagnosis depends on postoperative pathology. If case of spinal instability or neurological dysfunction, surgery had to be performed. Hyperuricemia should be treated in order to reduce the risk of acute attacks.