Copyright
©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Nov 18, 2016; 7(11): 766-775
Published online Nov 18, 2016. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v7.i11.766
Published online Nov 18, 2016. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v7.i11.766
Spinal gout: A review with case illustration
Hossein Elgafy, Xiaochen Liu, Joseph Herron, Department of Orthopedics, University of Toledo Medical Center, Toledo, OH 43614-5807, United States
Author contributions: All the authors contributed in outlining the manuscript, gathering the data, and writing the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors have any financial or other conflicts of interest that may bias the current study.
Data sharing statement: The technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset are available from the corresponding author at hossein.elgafy@utoledo.edu.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Hossein Elgafy, MD, MCH, FRCSEd, FRCSC, Department of Orthopedics, University of Toledo Medical Center, 3065 Arlington Avenue, Toledo, OH 43614-5807, United States. hkelgafy@aol.com
Telephone: +1-419-3833515 Fax: +1-419-3833526
Received: April 27, 2016
Peer-review started: April 28, 2016
First decision: July 6, 2016
Revised: August 1, 2016
Accepted: August 17, 2016
Article in press: August 18, 2016
Published online: November 18, 2016
Peer-review started: April 28, 2016
First decision: July 6, 2016
Revised: August 1, 2016
Accepted: August 17, 2016
Article in press: August 18, 2016
Published online: November 18, 2016
Core Tip
Core tip: Gout is a common inflammatory arthritis that rarely affects the spine. In such cases, patients may experience back pain, myelopathic symptoms and radiculopathy. Clinical findings are non-specific. Therefore, it is necessary to have an awareness of the diagnosis, especially in patients with a clinical history of gout and/or elevated inflammatory markers and hyperuricemia. While magnetic resonance imaging is the major non-invasive diagnostic method, all suspicious findings on imaging require surgical sampling for pathological confirmation. While typical uric acid lowering medications are first-line therapy, cord compression or continued symptoms may necessitate operative intervention if medications fail.