Background: The most severe complication after surgery for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis is spinal cord injury. There is a relationship between corrective surgery and subsequent elongation of the spinal canal. We sought to investigate which factors are involved in this phenomenon.
Methods: Seventy-seven patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (49 with Lenke type 1 and 28 with type 2) who underwent spinal correction surgery were included. The mean patient age at surgery was 14.2 years (range, 11 to 20 years). The spines of all patients were fused within the range of T2 to L2, and computed tomography (CT) data were retrospectively collected. We measured the preoperative and postoperative lengths of the spinal canal from T2 to L2 using 3-dimensional (3D) CT-based imaging software. We also examined the association between the change in T2-L2 spinal canal length and the radiographic parameters.
Results: The length of the spinal canal from T2 to L2 was increased by a mean of 8.5 mm in the patients with Lenke type 1, 12.7 mm in those with type 2, and 10.1 mm overall. Elongation was positively associated with the preoperative main thoracic Cobb angle in both the type-1 group (R = 0.43, p < 0.005) and the type-2 group (R = 0.77, p < 0.000001). The greatest elongation was observed in the periapical vertebral levels of the main thoracic curves.
Conclusions: Corrective surgery for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis elongated the spinal canal. The preoperative proximal, main thoracic, and thoracolumbar/lumbar Cobb angles are moderate predictors of postoperative spinal canal length after scoliosis surgery.
Clinical relevance: It is important to understand how much the spinal canal is elongated after surgery to lessen the risk of intraoperative and postoperative neurological complications.