Complication after vertebroplasty in patient with senile osteoporosis: Strategical therapy to revise?

Compression fractures are common in patients with osteoporosis and they are crippling. By 1892, Julius Wolff et al. realized that mechanical loads can affect bone architecture in living beings, but the mechanisms responsible for this effect were unknown, and it had no known clinical applications. In 2003 we know how this effect occurs and some of its applications. Vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty are relatively new techniques used to treat painful vertebral compression fractures. Percutaneous vertebroplasty is a therapeutic, interventional radiologic procedure. The technique consists of the percutaneous puncture of the affected vertebral body, followed by injection of bone cement into a vertebral body for the relief of pain, and the strengthening of the bone. This procedure also carries a risk of complications, and the fracture risk of vertebrae adjacent to cement vertebrae may be increased. The authors describe a case of vertebrae's fractures adjacent to cement vertebrae that are occured in a patient with senile osteoporosis.