Vertebral spondylodiscitis is a rare but serious disease that can mimic other conditions. Diabetes mellitus, spinal intervention and the use of immunosuppressive drugs in the management of a variety of conditions arerisk factors for the development of these infections. A conclusive diagnosis ofspondylodiscitisand prediction of the micro-organism canbe difficult to establish based on clinical features and spinal imaging alone, particularlyif the presentation is confounded by othermedical conditions like malignancy, for example. Percutaneous spinal biopsy under CT guidance is a minimally invasive method thatis increasingly requested...

Data were analyzed from a retrospective series of 30 cases with clinical and radiological suspicion (Figure 1) of spondylodiscitis underwent CT-guided biopsy, confirmed on microbiology, which results are available in our electronic medical record, for 3-year period ended December 2015. A number of cases that received antibiotics prior to biopsy are also discussed. All CT-guided spinal biopsies were performed by musculoskeletal radiologists from our service. Using CT guidance, a range of needle types and sizes ranging from 11-18 gauge (G) were used to obtain a...

30 CT-guided percutaneous spinal biopsies were performed for suspected spinal infection over the 3-year period ended December 2015. In this retrospective series,11 (36,7%) from 30 caseswere microbiologically confirmed at spinal biopsy with identification and culture of a specific bacterium.No fungal or other infective agents were detected in this series.The distribution of the various bacteriumidentified in these 11 cases are shown in Table 1. The most frequently identified organism was Staphylococcus aureus (37%). Mycobacterium tuberculosis wasn`t detected in none case, despite its prevalence in Brazil. All...

CT-guided spinal biopsy is a safe and well-tolerated technique for diagnosis of spondylodiscitis, but the probability of success is related to the acquisition of a representative sample of lesional tissue and the previous use of antiobiotics. The rate of positive cultures obtained was 36,7%, below the average found in the literature (40-90%). The retrospective design is an inherent limitation of our study. Most cases are culture negative (63,3%) due to prior antibiotics, and incomplete informations about it was another limiting factor. At the same time,...

Chew FS, Kline MJ. Diagnostic yield of CT-guided percutaneous aspiration procedures in suspected spontaneous infectious diskitis. Radiology 2001;218:211–4. Enoch DA, Cargill J S, Laing R et al. Value of CT-guided biopsy in the diagnosis of septic discitis.J Clin Pathol 2008;61:750–753. Michel SCA, Pfirrmann CWA, Boos N, Hodler J. CT-guided core biopsy of Subchondral bone and intervertebral space in suspected Spondylodiscitis. AJR 2006;186:977–80. Rimondi E, Staals EL, Errani C et al. Percutaneous CT-guided biopsy of the spine: results of 430 biopsies. Eur Spine J 2008;17:975–81. Tehranzadeh...

Anthony Souza, MD. Resident at the Deparment of Radiology Hospital Sírio-Libanês São Paulo / Brasil Email: [email protected]