| ABSTRACT: |
From our patients who had idiopathic scoliosis,
we identified a subset of eighteen in whom Harrington rods were used for
fixation down to the fifth lumbar vertebra. In five of these patients, low-back
pain, sciatica, and other neurological problems developed at two to thirty-two
months after arthrodesis. These complications were caused by migration of
the caudad hook into the spinal canal. The migration was probably caused
by a combination of lumbosacral lordosis and mobility of the fifth lumbar
vertebra (the most caudad mobile segment) on the segment below, resulting
in weakening of the lamina of the fifth lumbar vertebra. After removal of
the hardware, all patients had improvement of the lumbosacral and radicular
pain as well as resolution of the neurological abnormalities. |