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

Abstract 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.