New adjacent vertebral body fracture after percutaneous vertebroplasty

Percutaneous vertebroplasty is widely used as a treatment for painful osteoporotic compression fractures and malignant osteolytic tumors. Although the procedure appears to provide dramatic pain relief promote life quality but also with some complications. Additional adjacent vertebral body fracture are frequently reported after vertebroplasty but the cause relationship between the procedure and new-onset vertebral fracture remains unknown. New compression fractures following percutaneous vertebroplasty may not be a complication of the procedure itself, but rather as a part of the course of underlying pathology. The crucial point of discussion in this paper is whether vertebroplasty predisposes the development of additional vertebral fractures, at a rate higher than that seen in the absence of vertebroplasty, but no definitive answer to this question is yet to come. This review explores and attempts to comprehend the data both of supporting and refuting a relationship between vertebroplasty and the development of subsequent fractures.