Epidemiological data indicate that about 150 million patients die from tuberculosis worldwide, which places a great burden on personal health and socio-economics11. When Mycobacterium tuberculosis infects the spine, due to the depth of the lesion and the lack of obvious symptoms, patients are often unable to discover it in the early stages of the infection. When symptoms appear, Mycobacterium tuberculosis has often already spread through the paravertebral arterial and venous system, which makes it difficult to completely clear the lesion with internal medicine treatment. As a result, the spinal structure is destroyed, and eventually neurological symptoms onset and even paralysis occur12, 13. An epidemiological study showed that the spinal tuberculosis was usually secondary to the tuberculosis lesions in early childhood or adolescence and accounts for approximately 2–4% of patients with tuberculosis14. According to clinical studies, spinal tuberculosis usually undergoes 4 stages15, 16: (1) implantation stage also called initial stage: within 3 months of primary tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis invades the vertebra through bloodstream infection, with no spinal or neurological related clinical symptoms, and slight destruction at the back of the vertebrae can be seen on the imaging15; (2) early destruction stage: at this stage, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the immune system reach a state of balance, the paravertebral muscles and the nearby connective tissues form caseous granulomas, and the patient may have low back pain and mild kyphosis of the spine, which lasts for about 9 months17; (3) late destructive stage: Mycobacterium tuberculosis forms an infected cavity in the vertebra, the intervertebral space narrows, the vertebral body destroyed, the imaging showing worm-eaten-like changes of the vertebral plate, the vertebral body and the intervertebral space blurred18. At this stage, the patients' kyphotic angle gradually aggravates and finally even reaches more than 60°, but there are no neurological symptoms. This stage generally lasts for more than 30 years; (4) nerve damage or paraplegia stage: this stage usually occurs more than 30 years after the primary tuberculosis, and patients usually have unexplained chronic back pain19. At the same time, with the aggravation of posterior kyphosis, connective tissue proliferation behind the vertebral body, and long-term accumulation of intervertebral structural disorders, nerve compression or even paraplegia occurs. In our study, we analyzed the clinical course of the patients with severe spinal tuberculosis: 100% of the patients were diagnosed with tuberculosis in their adolescence; they underwent an asymptomatic period of more than 30 years, during which spinal tuberculosis was detected by imaging tests, usually with atypical symptoms such as low back pain, but no patients developed neurological symptoms during this period; after more than 30 years, the patients gradually developed neurological symptoms and underwent surgical treatment within 7 years. This is consistent with the results of previous studies.
Standardized treatment and management of patients with spinal tuberculosis based on the clinical stage can maximize patient benefit12. Since in the early stages of spinal tuberculosis, the symptoms of the motor system are mild and the spinal kyphotic deformity is also mild, patients often ignore the disease and does not take any therapeutic measures15. Therefore, pathological testing for tuberculosis and regular anti-tuberculosis treatment are essential during this period. During the destructive stage of spinal tuberculosis, patients often present with posterior kyphotic deformity or unexplained low back pain. Posterior lesion removal alone may improve patient prognosis20. Since there is no nerve damage, spinal internal fixation or neural root canal dilatation is usually not required21. In the stage of nerve damage or paraplegia, the patient has a severe spinal kyphotic deformity. Symptoms such as limb weakness and numbness occur due to the compression of the spinal cord as a result of the destruction of the structures in the posterior part of the spine22. Symptoms of nerve compression progress with the severe destruction of bone, at which point at which point surgical treatment is essential. However, in patients with severe spinal kyphotic deformity, spinal kyphosis orthopedic surgery is risky and difficult23, 24. The destruction of vertebral bone around the tuberculosis lesion, loss of the vertebral space, fusion of the vertebral bodies, and peripheral connective tissue proliferation result in a very rigid tuberculosis kyphotic deformity, making it difficult to ensure a good correction rate. At the same time, prolonged tuberculosis causes the patient to be in a state of chronic disease depletion and malnutrition. Severe kyphotic deformity leads to decreased lung function, prolonged hypothermic state due to long orthopedic time and intraoperative blood loss make patients unable to tolerate anesthesia10, 25, 26. Overall, this surgery is a great challenge for the patient as well as the spine surgeon.
Currently, there are no high-quality, large samples, multi-center randomized controlled trials clearly defined the surgical indications for spinal tuberculosis. However, some retrospective studies and even a small number of randomized controlled trials27–29 have shown that nerve injury is a clear indication for surgery, and it remains controversial whether severe spinal deformity is an indication for surgery7. The severity of a patient's spinal deformity is evaluated primarily by whether the patient's kyphotic angle is greater than 80°. If the angle is greater than 80°, the patient always has sagittal imbalance alignments and pulmonary function can be significantly impaired10. The surgery should be offered to those patients if they are symptomatic (intolerable back pain or neurological function impaired) and are physically fit to undergo surgery9. In our study, we grouped our patients depending on whether the surgery was timely or not, and evaluated the surgical outcomes in terms of deformity correction, occurrence of complications, and neurological function recovery. We found that the neurological function recovery of patients in the timely surgical group was significantly better than that of the non-timely surgical group. This is consistent with previous studies4, 9, 19. At the same time, the risks of performing the surgery during the asymptomatic period are not significantly reduced, and the surgery during the asymptomatic period does not provide the patient with benefits beyond correction of the deformity. Therefore, we recommend surgery only after the onset of neurological symptoms, and we believe that the timeliness of surgery is an important factor in the surgical outcomes. Since the symptoms are mild at the time of neurological symptoms onset, usually soreness and numbness of the lower limbs, and obvious sensory-motor disorders often appear a few years later, the patients' willingness to undergo surgery is not strong at the time of neurological symptoms onset, and some of the patients miss the optimal time for surgery. Figure 5 is an example of an untimely surgery while Fig. 6 is an example of a timely surgery. While both patients achieved good correction rates, the neurological function recovery in case 2 was significantly better than that in case 1.
Our study also has some limitations that need to be considered. Firstly, our study is a single-center retrospective study, and a multi-center study with a larger sample size could be considered in the future. Second, because our study is a retrospective study, we used the Frankle score to assess the primary surgical outcome, which was not detailed enough to assess the neurological function of the patients. In the future, if a prospective study is conducted, we would consider using more detailed scores such as the DASH or JOA score to assess the neurological function.