Vertebral Compression Fractures

What are Vertebral Compression Fractures caused by Osteoporosis or other disease?

PatientsOsteoporosis is a condition in which bones become thin and fragile. Eighty percent of those affected by the disease are women. Osteoporosis causes more than 1.5 million fractures a year of which 700,000 are vertebral, meaning they occur in the small bones that make up the spinal column. Sometimes other diseases, such as cancer, can also weaken bone structure and result in vertebral compression fractures.

Fractures of the vertebrae can be quite painful and are more difficult to manage than broken bones in the hip, wrist or elsewhere. When a vertebra fractures, the usual rectangular shape of the bone becomes compressed and distorted, causing pain. Often these fractures involve the collapse of more than one vertebra. For patients with unresolved chronic pain, two procedures, vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty, offer a minimally invasive approach to eliminate or greatly reduce pain.

In vertebroplasty, interventional radiologists use image guidance to inject a special cement mixture through a hollow needle into the fractured bone. In kyphohplasty, a balloon is first inserted through the needle into fractured bone to restore the height and shape of the vertebra. Then the balloon is removed and the cement mixture is injected into the cavity created by the balloon.

The procedure is done under mild sedation and local anesthesia to numb the treated area. Some patients experience immediate pain relief. Most report their pain is gone or significantly reduced within 48 hours.

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Other Vascular Services / Conditions

For more information on these as well as other interventional radiology procedures, please visit www.sirweb.org/patients/

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