Surgical methods in management of metastatic spinal cord lesions

Abstract

Malignant neoplasms remain the leading cause of death worldwide. The spine is a target for metastasis more often than other skeletal bones. This article details the principles of diagnosis, treatment, and the clinical picture of secondarylesions of the spinal column. The causes of pain syndrome in cancerous lesions of the spine are reviewed: compression of nerve structures, pathological fractures, spinal instability, lytic foci and paraneoplastic pain syndrome. The causes and patterns of each type of pain syndrome are described in detail. The article presents the scales used to predict the life expectancy of these patients: Tokuhashi, Tomita and Bauer. The effectiveness of these scales is compared. The selection criteria for surgical treatment of patients with metastatic lesions of the spine are described in detail. Modern methods of surgical treatment of secondary lesions of the spinal column are presented: palliative, subtotal, total (enblock resections). The indications and contraindications for each type of surgical treatment are described. Methods of intraoperative hemostasis are described, with the special attention given to preoperative tumor embolization. The errors and complications of this technique are described in detail. The correlation dependence of intraoperative blood loss volume on the embolization terms is presented. Modern trends in the development of surgical methods in metastatic spinal tumors are described in conclusion.