Coccidioidal spondylitis.

A review of twelve cases in which disseminated coccidioidomycosis caused localized infection of the spine showed that eight of the twelve patients were alive and well with no evidence of active infection an average of eleven years after onset (range, two to thirty-five years). One patient who was followed for more than twenty-three years had a slowly developing neurological impairment in the lower extremities as a result of lumbosarcral destruction instability. One patient died early in the course of the disease from fulminating cervical spondylitis and quadriplegia. A second patient had a paraplegia from thoracic spondylitis. On patient had no evidence of active spondylitis five years after the onset of the disease, but then died of coccidioidal meningitis. All patients were treated with intravenous amphotericin at some time in the course of their illness, although its effect was not always dramatic. The three patients with neurological impairment did not undergo spine fusion, but most of the others had that operation. Surgical evacuation of abscesses and debridement of infected bone was also performed in many cases.