Background
Despite current academic debates percutaneous vertebroplasty (VP) has been convincingly used for the treatment of osteoporotic compression fractures all around the world. Polymethylmethacrylate bone cement is directly injected into a fractured vertebral body through one or two bone biopsy needles to stabilize the fracture fragments and to possibly improve the vertebral body height. The fracture pain represents a significant burden for the patients, limiting physical function, quality of life and increasing social isolation.
The immediate and clinically relevant pain alleviation after vertebroplasty does therefore have a large impact on patients' mobility, autonomy and quality of life.
The current state of the art in the treatment of acute osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures that are nonresponsive to conservative treatment is still augmentation of the fractures with VP or balloon kyphoplasty (BKP) given an intact posterior vertebral body wall. BKP is claimed to be saver by reducing the occurrence of cement leakages and more effective in reducing the fracture, i.e. reconstituting vertebral body height. While the first argument largely depends on the definition of an adverse event, i.e. is an asymptomatic radiologically visible cement leakage truly a complication, the second argument could not hold its promise since the regained vertebral body height is partially lost after balloon deflation. This problem is tackled by further developed BKP technologies like vertebral body stenting (VBS). From a cost-effectiveness perspective, VP is superior to conservative medical care and one can postulate that it is hence also more cost-effective than BKP which is a much more costly treatment option.In addition, it is the only prophylactic augmentation option that does not "destroy" intact unfractured bone structures by deployment of the balloon but does only augment them. It is hence the least aggressive augmentation option for prophylaxis.
Osteoporosis as the underlying disease leads to an increased risk of fractures of the adjacent vertebral bodies, with incidences up to 22% in the first year. After fracture augmentation new fractures in the spine can occur. This leads to reoperations in a frail population with high numbers of American Society of Anaesthesiologists (ASA) 3-4 patients. Any non-life-saving surgical intervention in these patients needs to be avoided. Therefore, prophylactic augmentation of the adjacent non-fractured vertebral bodies is a treatment option which is safe and may reduce reoperation rates. Since VP is currently under scientific and clinical scrutiny and calls for level-one-evidence become audible everywhere, the investigators plan to assess the hypothesis that prophylactic augmentation significantly decreases reoperation rates for adjacent new fractures with a randomized controlled trial.
Objective
The aim of the proposed study is to show the effect of preventive augmentations of adjacent vertebral bodies on 6 (12) months reoperation rates.
Subjects with an acute (\<= 6 weeks) single level osteoporotic compression fracture, meeting the inclusion criteria and having no exclusion criterion will be randomized to either single level fracture fixation with vertebroplasty or triple level augmentation with VP fixation of the fracture and additional prophylactic vertebroplasty in both adjacent levels. The hypothesis is that prophylactic VP augmentation of both adjacent vertebral bodies in acute single level osteoporotic compression fractures results in significantly lower reoperation rates for new spinal fractures within 6 months after surgery compared to isolated single level fracture fixation.
Methods
This is an open label mono-center randomized controlled pilot trial. Given the timeframe and budget of the study, the investigators aim at conducting a pilot trial for clinically verifying the sample size calculation in order to have a sound basis of information for planning a larger multicenter trial. The inclusion of primary cases will last for 12 months, the followup intervals for each case will be 2 and 6 months since the large majority of new fractures appears within that time window. 12 months followup will be conducted by mail/telephone interview. Preliminary calculation of results, i.e. a new corrected sample size will hence be carried out at the end of one and a half years. Two treatment groups will be compared:
Group 1: single level fracture fixation with vertebroplasty, Group 2: triple level augmentation with VP fixation of the fracture and additional prophylactic vertebroplasty in both the adjacent levels.
