Misdiagnosed and mismanaged atypical spinal tuberculosis: A case series report

Compared to other diseases, early or atypical spinal tuberculosis (TB) is prone to being misdiagnosed due to the lack of specific clinical manifestations and misleading negative results of various laboratory analyses and imaging examinations. Various methods for diagnosing spinal TB have become research hotspots. Recently, it has been proposed that effective vaccination is a mainstay of long-term policies to combat and control the TB epidemic. However, some new TB vaccines require further evaluation and clinical trials to demonstrate their efficiency and safety. Thus, early diagnosis and effective treatment are the other essential long-term strategies for controlling the TB epidemic immunization is closely associated with the diagnosis of spinal TB, which will become the focus of future research and set the direction for future developments. The present study provides a case series and a literature review of the characteristics of spinal TB to provide guidance for the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of spinal TB.