Instrumenting the small thoracic pedicle: the role of intraoperative computed tomography image–guided surgery

Object Traditionally, instrumentation of thoracic pedicles has been more difficult because of their relatively smaller size. Thoracic pedicles are at risk for violation during surgical instrumentation, as is commonly seen in patients with scoliosis and in women. The laterally based “in-out-in” approach, which technically results in a lateral breach, is sometimes used in small pedicles to decrease the comparative risk of a medial breach with neurological involvement. In this study the authors evaluated the role of CT image–guided surgery in navigating screws in small thoracic pedicles. Methods Thoracic (T1–12) pedicle screw placements using the O-arm imaging system (Medtronic Inc.) were evaluated for accuracy with preoperative and postoperative CT. “Small” pedicles were defined as those ≤ 3 mm in the narrowest diameter orthogonal to the long axis of the pedicle on a trajectory entering the vertebral body on preinstrumentation CT. A subset of “very small” pedicles (≤ 2 mm in the narrowest diameter, 13 pedicles) was also analyzed. Screw accuracy was categorized as good (< 1 mm of pedicle breach in any direction or in-out-in screws), fair (1–3 mm of breach), or poor (> 3 mm of breach). Results Twenty-one consecutive patients (age range 32–71 years) had large (45 screws) and small (52 screws) thoracic pedicles. The median pedicle diameter was 2.5 mm (range 0.9–3 mm) for small and 3.9 mm (3.1–6.7 mm) for large pedicles. Computed tomography–guided surgical navigation led to accurate screw placement in both small (good 100%, fair 0%, poor 0%) and large (good 96.6%, fair 0%, poor 3.4%) pedicles. Good screw placement in very small or small pedicles occurred with an in-out-in trajectory more often than in large pedicles (large 6.8% vs small 36.5%, p < 0.0005; vs very small 69.2%, p < 0.0001). There were no medial breaches even though 75 of the 97 screws were placed in postmenopausal women, traditionally at higher risk for osteoporosis. Conclusions Computed tomography–guided surgical navigation allows for safe, effective, and accurate instrumentation of small (≤ 3 mm) to very small (≤ 2 mm) thoracic pedicles.