[Fundamental and clinical studies on CT gas myelography of the cervical spine]

We applied CT gas myelography at the cervical spinal region and investigated the clinical value of CT gas myelography as a supplementary diagnostic method for the spinal cord and vertebral diseases. Fundamental studies of the conditions of window width and window height and the permitted limit of the angle of incidence were made with phantoms of human neck to establish proper conditions of these factors. In clinical studies, 23 adult persons, who had no abnormality in the cervical spine and in the cervical spinal cord were observed to have normal CT gas myelograms of the cervical region, whereas 37, of clinical cases including 18 of cervical spondylosis, 10 of OPLL, 2 of cervical discopathy, 3 of fracture and dislocation of the cervical spine, 2 of cervical vertebral tumor and 2 of CYL, were found to show clear pathologic findings in the cross sections of the vertebral foramen, subarachnoidal space and spinal cord on the CT gas myelograms. The representative cases of these diseases were presented. The gas myelograms were morphologically classified and investigated in relation to the clinical findings. From the result of these investigations, CT gas myelography appears to be highly useful as a supplementary diagnostic method for diseases of the cervical spine and the cervical spinal cord. Furthermore, we compared the effect of this method with that of CT myelography using metrizamide, a recently developed water-soluble contrast medium.