Thoracolumbar fractures without neurological impairment: A review of diagnosis and treatment.

An appropriate protocol and unified management of thoracolumbar fractures without neurological impairment has not been well defined.This review attempts to elucidate some controversies regarding diagnostic tools, the ability to define the most appropriate treatment of classification systems and the evidence for conservative and surgical methods based on the recent literature. Cite this article: Vilà-Canet G, García de Frutos A, Covaro A, Ubierna MT, Caceres E. Thoracolumbar fractures without neurological impairment: a review of diagnosis and treatment. EFORT Open Rev 2016;1:332-338. DOI: 10.1302/2058-5241.1.000029.

Do surgical expectations change depending on first time surgery or reoperation? A prospective cohort study in lumbar spine surgery.

PURPOSE: To assess whether patients undergoing lumbar spine surgery for the first time (Group 1) had different expectations from those undergoing lumbar spine surgery for a failed previous procedure (Group 2). METHODS: A prospective study that included 77 patients. A set of self-reported questionnaires was pre-operatively administered including VAS, Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), Zung Depression Scale and the NASS lumbar spine questionnaire (expectations scale). RESULTS: Fifty-six patients in Group 1 and 21 patients in Group 2. Both groups had high expectations with regard to the surgical procedure (n.s.). Depressed patients, despite being more disabled than non-depressed according to ODI (p 0.001), had similar expectations than non-depressed patients (n.s.). CONCLUSION: Patients' expectations remained very high despite having had a failed previous surgery for the same procedure.

Cell-free cartilage engineering approach using hyaluronic acid-polycaprolactone scaffolds: a study in vivo.

Polycaprolactone scaffolds modified with cross-linked hyaluronic acid were prepared in order to establish whether a more hydrophilic and biomimetic microenvironment benefits the progenitor cells arriving from bone marrow in a cell-free tissue-engineering approach. The polycaprolactone and polycaprolactone/hyaluronic acid scaffolds were characterized in terms of morphology and water absorption capacity. The polycaprolactone and polycaprolactone/hyaluronic acid samples were implanted in a chondral defect in rabbits; bleeding of the subchondral bone was provoked to generate a spontaneous healing response. Repair at 1, 4, 12, and 24 weeks was assessed macroscopically using the International Cartilage Repair Society score and the Oswestry Arthroscopy Score and microscopically using immunohistological staining for collagen type I and type II, and for Ki-67. The presence of hyaluronic acid improves scaffold performance, which supports a good repair response without biomaterial pre-seeding.