Treatment of vertebral compression fractures with the cranio-caudal expandable implant SpineJack®: Technical note and outcomes in 77 consecutive patients.

UNLABELLED: In vertebral compression fractures, the potential of kyphoplasty for restoring vertebral height is limited by the loss of restored height that occurs when the balloon is deflated and removed. SpineJack(®) is also inserted percutaneously but is then left within the vertebral body after its expansion to reduce the fracture, thus avoiding loss of correction before the injection of cement. SpineJack(®) was used in 77 patients to treat 83 recent VCFs (55.4% at L1-L2) due to trauma (59.7%) or osteoporosis (40.3%). Three (3.9%) complications were recorded, but none was related to SpineJack(®): there was one case each of symptomatic cement leakage along a secondary pedicular fracture line; infection; and incipient device migration at the beginning of the learning curve. The rate of adjacent fractures was only 2.6%. The 5-year outcomes demonstrate that SpineJack(®) provides both immediate and long-term benefits in terms of pain relief, functional recovery, and maintenance of vertebral height restoration.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: IV, retrospective study.