Cervical Anatomy and Pathology - Midthoracic Vertebra

Mid-thoracic vertebra 14 year old boy

Axial section through a mid–thoracic vertebra of a 14–year–old boy who succumbed to a protracted respiratory and circulatory insufficiency. He had an advanced paralytic scoliosis that had not been surgically treated and which had markedly progressed during the past two years. The slide shows a grotesque deformation of the vertebra at the endplate level. The deformity mainly consists of a rotation of the vertebral body to the left. By contrast a less pronounced rotation and deformation of the wide and sagittally elongated spinal is present. The spinal canal has assumed a markedly trefoliate configuration. Note that the spinal cord snugly is nested in the trefoliate recess at the concavity of the scoliotic curve and that it also is rotated to the right. The right pedicle is thinner than the pedicle on the left. The asymmetry of the costotransverse processes (due to the scoliosis, only the right process is in the plane of this section) is associated with a marked asymmetry of the ribs and their costocentral articulation (with the disc and the adjacent endplates) and the costotransverse articulation (a true, synovial joint between the head of the rib and the costotransverse process). Posteriorly, the spinous process lies approximately in the midline. Note also the open epiphysis of the head of the left rib.

©2000 Wolfgang Rauschning, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Clinical Anatomy
Academic University Hospital
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
Uppsala, Sweden
Reproduction without permission is prohibited
http://www.akademiska.se/

Updated on: 02/01/10