["Inflammatory" disk degeneration. Magnetic resonance tomographic clinical picture]

Disc degeneration, if it appears relatively early, progresses rapidly with inadequate bone compensation for stabilisation of the area, or in the presence of anatomic variation of the vertebrae with short sagittal diameters, there may be tissue proliferation and edema in the bone marrow and vascular granulations within the disc. We demonstrated these changes in 17 patients by means of MRT which shows edema of the bone marrow and contrast enhancement within the disc. All these patients had severe symptoms. There were no significant neurological findings since in general there was no disc prolapse. The MRT characteristics of this condition are described and correlated with the clinical and radiological features. The use of Gd-DTPA and subtractive spin-echo and gradient-echo sequences in the differential diagnosis from infective discitis is discussed.