Discitis secondary to surgery of the lumbar intervertebral disk

Discitis is an infrequent complication after intervertebral disc surgery, We review a series of 6 cases of postoperative discitis who represent 0.8% of all the patients operated on for lumbar disc herniation, All the patients had low back pain, fever and an increased postoperative erytrocite sedimentation rate (ESR), Magnetic resonance imaging with and without administration of gadolinium showed decreased bone marrow signal intensity adjacent to the disk space on the T1-weighted image and increased disk space signal intensity on the more T2-weighted image, Treatment was performed with bed rest, antimicrobial therapy and inmobilization of the spine, The authors suggest that increased body temperature, and ESR within few days after disc operation is the first sign of infection, This should be confirmed with MRI unenhnaced and enhanced T1 and T2 sequences.