Feasibility and curative effect of percutaneous vertebroplasty with flexible bone cement injector

Objective To evaluate the clinical efficacy of percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP) with flexible bone cement injector through unilateral puncture. Method Unilateral puncture line PVP treatment for thoracolumbar vertebral compression fracture was conducted in 78 patients, which was divided into observation group and control group according to the use of different equipment. The flexible bone cement injector was used in 36 cases of observation group, which injected the bone cement into three places at the vertebral body. The ordinary straight bone cement injector was applied in the 42 cases of the control group. The operation time, the time of radiation exposure, and the amount of bone cement injection were recorded, and the leakage of bone cement was observed. The visual analogue scale (VAS), relative vertebral height and Cobb angle were recorded at 1 week, 1 and 2 years follow-up. The time of operation, the time of radiation exposure, the amount of bone cement injection, the incidence of bone cement leakage, VAS, relative height of vertebral body and Cobb angle were compared between the two groups using independent samples t test or χ2 test. Result All patients in the two groups were successfully treated by surgery. There were no significant differences between the observation group and the control group in the operation time and the time of radiation exposure and the incidence of bone cement leakage (P>0.05). The injection amounts of bone cement in the observation group and the control group were (5.6±0.7) and (3.2±0.6) ml, with statistically significant difference (P 0.05). At 1 year and 2 years after operation, the differences of the above indexes between the two groups were significantly different (P<0.05), with the observation group being superior to the control group. Conclusions Application of flexible bone cement injector for PVP operation is safe and feasible. Compared with the traditional straight bone cement injector, the use of flexible bone cement injector will not increase the operation time, radiation exposure time and the incidence of bone cement leakage but will improve the long-term effect. Key words: Spinal fractures; Vertebroplasty; Complications