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Published on: August 9, 2024
[The anatomic and radiographic morphometry of thoracic pedicle rib unit]
Xing Wei1, Jian-jun He, Shu-xun Hou
1Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, First Hospital affiliated to the General Hospital of the People's Liberation Army, Beijing, China.
Objectives:
To investigate the spatial structure of pedicle rib units in normal thoracic human spines and to compare the dimensions of the pedicle rib unit with corresponding dimensions.
Methods:
Thoracic spine specimens in four fresh adult cadaveric were used. Computerized tomographic (CT) images (including two-dimensional, three-dimensional reconstruction) of the thoracic spines were obtained. Measurement parameters include:the width, the height, the chord length and the sagittal angles of the pedicle rib unit compared with pedicle, especially for the pedicle-rib overlapping height.
Results:
The pedicle rib unit was not a simple two-dimensional structure but a three-dimensional structure. The shortest height of pedicle rib unit was (12.6 ± 0.8) mm (T(1)), while the longest was (16.9 ± 1.1) mm (T(11)). The shortest height of pedicle-rib overlap was (7.2 ± 0.3) mm (T(1)), while the longest was (11.8 ± 1.0) mm (T(10)). The height of pedicle rib unit and the height of pedicle were significantly larger than that of the pedicle-rib overlap (P < 0.05), while there was no significantly difference between the height of pedicle rib unit and the height of pedicle (P > 0.05).
Conclusions:
The pedicle rib unit is a complicated spatial structure, and the longitudinal height of pedicle-rib overlap should be taken as the real height of the unit.
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