[Intravertebral gaseous lucency. Apropos of 7 new cases]

The authors report a personal series of 7 new cases with an appearance of intra-vertebral gaseous lucency, which was described by Maldague et al. [16] in 1978. They found the majority of the features of the disease as described in the 44 cases reported in the literature: advanced age, female predominance, predilection for the thoraco-lumbar junction, constancy of diffuse bony demineralization and the possibility of metabolic disturbances. Case no 2 suggests the hypothesis of a pathology induced by bismuth salts and cases no 3 and 4 raise the question of the benign nature of this appearance. Finally, the authors show that this image is not so much rare as mis-diagnosed. 4 of the 7 cases were found during a retrospective study of 140 case-files.