Radiological Frequency of Lumbarization in CT Diagnosis of Lumbosacral Syndrome

Abstract

Introduction: Lumbosacral transitional vertebra is a congenital anomaly of the spine that manifests itself as lumbarization - the first sacral vertebra shows a lumbar configuration. Our main goal will be to present the total number of patients with lumalization as a congenital anomaly.

Methods: The retrospective descriptive study covered the period from September 24, 2020 to September 14, 2021. The data in this study were collected from patients who were referred for radiological diagnosis of the lumbosacral spine at the Radiology Service of the Croatian Hospital "Dr. Fr. Mato Nikolić" in Nova Bila. All patients were scanned in supine, arms elevated, FOV 90 mm, axial sections, with thickness of 1 mm. The material for writing the paper was collected from the hospital software systems IMPAX.

Results: Of the total number of patients, 68.6%, or 131 patients, did not have lumbarization. Lumbarization was diagnosed in 17 patients, i.e. 8.9%, a CT examination of the lumbosacral spine was performed on several female patients, 104 of them (54%), while the number of male patients is slightly smaller, 87 (46%). The largest number of patients who were examined are between 55 and 65 years of age, 62 of them (32.5%).

Conclusion: CT is the method of choice when it comes to bone defects and fractures. CT is used mainly in the assessment of damage to the interarticular part of the vertebra. In use today are mainly multi-detector CT devices, which significantly shorten the duration of the examination. At the same time, they also enable a better representation of anatomical structures and pathological changes due to different possibilities of image reconstruction.