The Role of Bone SPECT/CT in Evaluation of Persistent or Recurrent Back Pain Following Spine Surgery

March 16, 2021 updated by: Raghda Hassan Mohamed Farweiz, Assiut University
  • To evaluate the role of SPECT/CT in assessment of the osteoblastic activity in patients with persistent or recurrent back pain after spine surgery with inconclusive CT/MRI findings.
  • To assess the value of bone SPECT/CT in the management of back pain.

Study Overview

Status

Not yet recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Low back pain is a common disorder, with international studies having found prevalence rates between 12% and 35% and life time prevalence rates ranging from 49% to 80%.

It is caused mainly by degenerative spinal disorders, such as spondylolisthesis, degenerative scoliosis, degenerative disc disease and recurrent disc herniations.

The management of low back pain varies from conservative to more invasive methods, such as spinal stabilization surgery that involves the placement of metallic screws, rods, plates or cages. Such surgery is increasingly performed to improve spinal stability in a variety of spine pathologies, including disc degeneration, spinal stenosis and spondylolisthesis.

On the other hand, spinal fusion surgery is performed in patients with severe chronic back pain when segmental instability is believed to cause the symptoms. The rationale for this is that pain relief will be achieved once the fusion restricts motion in the painful segments. For this purpose, a wide array of techniques has been proposed, including dorsal or dorsoventral spondylodesis, either in a one-step or two-step procedure.

It is estimated that more than 300,000 lumbar spinal fusion procedures are performed annually in the United States, and a continuously rising trend has also been observed in other parts of the world.

Unfortunately, recurrent pain after spinal surgery is a well known problem. It is reported that up to 10-20% of patients experience persistent/recurrent pain after lumbar spinal instrumentation and fusion , with studies estimating the surgical reintervention rate to be around 14% over a 4-year follow-up period and 19% over 11 years.

This may be related to loosening of the metallic implants or to a failure of a stably implanted graft to immobilize the fused segments. A further differential diagnosis is degenerative disease involving the spinal segments above or below the instrumented region. This so-called adjacent instability (AI) or adjacent level disease (ALD) may be precipitated by arthrodesis, as this procedure alters the biomechanics of the spine, thereby increasing motion of a mechanical load on the segments neighboring the graft. The differentiation between these conditions has therapeutic consequences as the treatment varies according to the cause.

Standard evaluation of patients with persistent or recurrent pain following spinal stabilization surgery includes clinical examination and conventional imaging using plain radiography, CT or MR imaging.

Conventional imaging is performed for the evaluation of hardware position (changes), hardware failure, fusion evolution, alignment of the vertebrae, possible pseudarthrosis and hardware loosening.

In general, because of the presence of nonspecific postoperative changes and metal-related imaging artifacts, the interpretation of CT images is often challenging and inconclusive. Thus, whether surgical reintervention is indicated based on conventional imaging may prove difficult to ascertain.

The value of bone scintigraphy with single-photon emission tomography/computed tomography (SPECT/CT) in patients with persistent or recurrent back pain after spine stabilization surgery has been addressed in a number of studies and the technique has been suggested to be a useful diagnostic tool for identification of postsurgical spine pathology.

Although most of these studies were based on a small sample size and lacked robust reference standards; it has been concluded that the use of SPECT/CT adds value in assessing patients following spinal surgery.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Anticipated)

4

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years to 70 years (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Patients with persistent/recurrent back pain after spine surgery and inconclusive conventional imaging.
  • All patients will be clinically assessed by orthopedic surgeons or neurosurgeons specialized and experienced in spine surgery.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Patients less than 18 years old.
  • Patients in whom stabilization surgery is secondary to a destructive bone malignancy (including multiple myeloma).
  • Patients with known metabolic bone disease (such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, AS & SLE)

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Diagnostic
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Other: Bone SPECT/CT
Gamma Camera with computed tomography
Procedure: spine surgeries
all spine surgeries including stabilization and fusion surgeries
Other: Spine surgeries
spine stabilization and fusion surgeries
Procedure: spine surgeries
all spine surgeries including stabilization and fusion surgeries

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
use of SPECT/CT to measure the level of pain either persistent or recurrent after spine stabilization and fusion surgeries at any level of the spine and give a score and make a pain scale before and after therapeutic injection
Time Frame: up to 2 years
Patients complaining from persistent or recurrent pain after spine stabilization and fusion surgeries at any level of the spine up to two years after surgery do CT/MRI and give inconclusive results, those patients referred to do Single Photon Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography at nuclear medicine unit using radioactive material Technicium99m- Methylene Diphosphonate to measure any increase in osteoblastic activity in the region of the stabilized segment for example at adjacent facet joint, sacrum or endplates and compare it with iliac crest activity then give therapeutic injection at determined increased activity and make pain score before and after therapeutic injection then follow up after 15 days
up to 2 years

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Assiut University

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Anticipated)

April 1, 2021

Primary Completion (Anticipated)

March 1, 2022

Study Completion (Anticipated)

October 1, 2022

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

January 19, 2021

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 16, 2021

First Posted (Actual)

March 17, 2021

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

March 17, 2021

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 16, 2021

Last Verified

March 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • SPECT/CT after spine surgery

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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