[Helical CT for lumbosacral spinal].

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of helical CT for lumbosacral pathology.

MATERIALS AND

METHODS

We performed helical CT with multiplanar reconstruction, including the formation of oblique transaxial and coronal images, in 62 patients with various lumboscral disorders, including 32 non-enhanced CT and 36 CT after myelography. We correlated the appearance of the stenotic spinal canal and neoplastic disease with the findings on MRI obtained at nearly the same time.

RESULTS

We obtained helical CT images in all cases in about 30 seconds. The diagnostic ability of helical CT was roughly equal to that of MRI in patients with spondylosis deformans, spondylolisthesis and herniated nucleus pulposus. There was no significant difference in diagnostic value for degenerative lumbosacral disease with canal and foramnial stenosis between non-enhanced and post-myelography helical CT. However, non-enhanced helical CT could not clearly demonstrate neoplastic disease because of the poor contrast resolution.

CONCLUSION

Helical CT was useful in evaluating degenerative disorder and its diagnostic value was nearly equal to that of MRI. We considered that helical CT may be suitable for the assessment of patients with severe lumbago owing to the markedly shortened examination time. However, if helical CT is used as a screening method for lumbosacral disease, one must be careful of its limitations, for example, poor detectability of neoplastic disease, vascular anomalies and so on.