Raja Sekhar Kennedy, Ravi
INTRODUCTION: Tuberculosis has been a major public health problem. The development and the introduction of antituberculous chemotherapeutic agents in the 1940’s reduced the death rate. Of all the patients with tuberculosis nearly 1-3% have involvement of the skeletal system. Vertebral tuberculosis is the most common form of skeletal tuberculosis with a reported incidence of up to 50%. Tuberculosis of the spine (Pott’s disease) is the most common and most dangerous from of tuberculosis infection. Modification of surgical techniques and newer chemotherapeutic agents has revolutionized the treatment of spinal tuberculosis. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To study and analyse the surgical and radiological results of patients who have been operated for dorsal and dorsolumbar caries. MATERIALS AND METHOD: It is a prospective study done in the Department of Neurosurgery, Government General Hospital,Kakinada from July 2014 to July 2015. It is a tertiary care hospital. 50 patients diagnosed with dorsal and dorsolumbar tuberculosis were recruited into the study and were managed. RESULTS: 50 patients with dorsal and dorsolumbar tuberculosis, with different symptoms were managed by a combination of surgical techniques and the improvement was assessed by various parameters. CONCLUSION: In this study, it was found that all patients who underwent surgical decompression of the spinal cord there was improvement in the neurological status. The surgical approach and type of surgery is planned based on how the cord is compressed and the amount of instability. No single surgery was found superior or inferior to any other and the results remain the same as far as neurological recovery is concerned.
