Clinical Effectiveness of Single Lumbar Periradicular Infiltration in Patients with Sciatica.

Periradicular therapy (PRT) is a minimally invasive radiological procedurein patients with chronic lumbar pain.The aim of the study is to identify clinical and radiological predictive factors for treatment success after a single PRT treatment in patients with sciatica.The study includes a prospective follow-up of 166 patients treated with PRT. The pain intensity is determined according to the VAS scale and the degree of improvement is presented as excellent (over 75%), good (50-70%), moderate (25-49%), and weak (less than 25%). The follow up of the treated patients was done at 2 weeks, 3 and 6 months. In patients with pain duration up to 3 months, the improvement was excellent in n=32 (58.18%) after 2 weeks, after 3 months n=41 (74.55%) and after 6 months n=41 (74.55%). This stands in contrast to patients with pain over 1 year. The percentage of improvement after 6 months, post-intervention, was highest in patients without nerve root compression (86.25±19.2),and the highest improvement after 6 months was in patients with localization of pain at the L4-L5 level (69.69±29.7), the greatest improvement after six months was in patients with extraforaminal hernia (62.82±34.3), and the lowest in patients with central stenosis (40.21±30.7).Our study results suggest that the shorter a pain duration, low-grade root compression, injection level and type of herniation area predictor the more favourable response patients have to transforaminal epidural steroid injection in patients with sciatica.

Polyostotic Fibrous Dysplasia in a Six-year-Old Boy.

Fibrous dysplasia (FD) is a rare congenital benign bone disease that manifests as a defect in the bone remodeling process, affecting the function, differentiation, and maturation of osteoblasts. This process is located in the bone marrow, where the normal marrow tissue is replaced with immature bone islands and fibrous stroma. The etiology is unclear so far, but it is known to be connected with a point mutation of the gene that encodes Gs α protein at the time of embryogenesis, and because of that, all of the affected somatic cells become dysplastic. It is important to determine whether the mutation occurred earlier in the process of embryogenesis so that there will be more mutant cells and the disease will appear in a more severe form. The clinical presentation of FD is variable, so there are plenty of potential differential diagnoses. The most common include Paget disease, non-ossifying fibroma, osteofibrous dysplasia, aneurysmal bone cyst, adamantinoma, giant cell tumor, fracture callus, and low-grade central osteosarcoma.