Active clinical trials for "Spinal Diseases"

Cervical myelopathy (CM), a chronically compressive spinal cord lesion, is the most common cause of non-traumatic paraparesis/quadriparesis among the elderly. Hong Kong is facing a heavy social economic burden from CM with the rapidly aging population. Surgical decompression is considered as the mainstay of the treatment for CM patients to relieve their symptoms and signs. Yet the surgical outcome is not always satisfactory. There is a pressing need for understanding the exact mechanism of surgical decompression on the recovery of myelopathic cord in order to improve the prognosis of CM patients in near future.This project will evaluate neuronal activities and axon regeneration by longitudinally monitoring at time zero, 3 and 6 month after the surgery in CM patients using UTE, BOLD-fMRI and DTI, and to investigate the relationship of preoperative neuronal activities of myelopathic cord with axon regeneration.

The study aims to shed light about the potential role of Erector Spinae Block in the management of postoperative pain following vertebral fixation surgery via posterior approach. Patients will be randomized, the block will be performed before inducing general anesthesia, intraoperative management will be uniformed, while postoperative analgesia will compare cases (patients who received the block) versus controls (usual care with endovenous morphine infusion only).

A new mechanical device was developed in order to provide the surgeon with intraoperative information about the mechanical strength of the cancellous bone within the vertebral body. DensiProbe Spine is intended to be used in patients undergoing transpedicular stabilization of the thoracolumbar spine. The objective of the DensiProbe Spine pilot study is to investigate the handling and feasibility of the DensiProbe Spine measurement device.

Interventional spine procedures are an increasingly popular means of diagnosis and treatment of spine disease. By convention, local anesthetics are used at the beginning of these procedures with the goal of minimizing pain. However, the infiltration of the local anesthetic is painful. This initial painful stimulus can heighten pain awareness and cause anxiety or excessive movement during the procedure. The purpose of this study is to determine patient discomfort with administration of cutaneous local anesthetic prior to interventional spine procedures compared to no anesthetic administration for different gauge procedural needles. Another purpose is to determine patient discomfort with administration of local anesthetic by traditional technique compared to an alternative technique and to develop a standardized technique and criteria for local anesthetic administration during spine injection procedures that minimizes patient pain, and may help reduce the overall risk of these procedures. We plan to enroll a total of 200-300 subjects coming to Stanford for symmetric bilateral single injections.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of prolonged sitting duration and three different sitting postures (erect, slumped, and slouched sitting postures) on spinal nerve root function by measuring the soleus (SOL) H-reflex amplitude. In addition, the pressure under the ischial tuberosities during the three sitting postures were assessed and correlated with the SOL H-reflex amplitude.

This study will be a non-randomized trial consisting of patients with single level (C3 to C7) symptomatic cervical disc disease who have not previously received fusion surgery at the same level, and have failed to improve with conservative treatment for at least 6 weeks prior to enrollment, or who present with progressive neurological symptoms or signs in the face of conservative treatment.

In this study, we will use advanced and newly available MR imaging techniques at 3 Tesla (including in situ axial loading and quantitative T1rho, T2, and diffusion measurements) to assess the intervertebral discs and adjacent vertebrae in patients with lumbar back pain scheduled for back surgery (n=20), patients with degenerative disease without classic discogenic back pain (n=10), patients who had discectomies for herniated discs (n=5), and age-matched volunteers without back pain (n=10). In all patients standard imaging procedures will also be performed, including radiographs, standard MRI at 1.5 Tesla and discography. All patients will have specimen of the intervertebral disc harvested at surgery and pathologic analysis and spectroscopy of these specimen will be performed. Post-surgical findings/outcome combined with discography will serve as a standard of reference for the identification of the painful disc(s). The diagnostic performance of the new techniques in assessing the painful disc will be evaluated. We will collect disc specimens from 50 patients undergoing back surgery but did not have pre-surgical MR imaging. These disc specimens will be analyzed in the same manner as the specimens collected from surgical patients who had pre-surgical MRI. This study will serve as a pilot study for a larger project focusing on advanced imaging of the painful intervertebral disc. We hypothesis that advanced, dedicated MR examinations at 3T can identify painful degenerated discs in patients with chronic lumbar back pain.

To establish an observational registry for systematic collection of clinical data from Renaissance-guided spine surgeries.

Readmissions increasingly serve as a metric of hospital performance, inviting quality improvement initiatives in both medicine and surgery. Recently, a readmission reduction program in the United States was associated with significantly shorter length of stay, earlier discharge, and reduced 30-day readmission after elective neurosurgery. These results underscore the importance of patient education and surveillance after hospital discharge, and it would be beneficial to test whether the same approach yields beneficial results in a different health system, the NHS. In this study, the investigators will replicate the Transitional Care Program (TCP) published by Robertson et al.(Journal of Neurosurgery 2017) with the goal of decreasing length of stay, improving discharge efficiency, and reducing readmissions in neurosurgical patients by optimizing patient education and post-discharge surveillance.

Intraoperative hypothermia is associated with many clinical adverse outcomes. Many techniques were applied to prevent intraoperative hypothermia, and positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) has been known to blunt intraoperative hypothermia by increasing thermoregulatory vasoconstriction threshold. The investigators assessed the effect of PEEP on the prevention of intraoperative hypothermia during spine surgery in prone position.