Splenic Rupture After Minimal Invasive Lateral Retropleural Corpectomy

Author Info

Michele Cappuccio Gregorio Tugnoli Tiziano Fidilio Federico De Iure

Corresponding Author

Michele Cappuccio
Department of Spine Surgery, Maggiore Hospital, Bologna, Italy

A B S T R A C T

Retropleural minimal invasive approach to the thoracolumbar junction has become more popular in the last decade both for degenerative and traumatic spine surgery as it marries the advantages of direct vision typical of open surgery and the philosophy of tissue sparing which characterizes the thoracoscopic approach. Nevertheless, as with the just mentioned techniques, this approach also requires the caudal displacement of the diaphragm with the organs below including the spleen. The authors report one case of postoperative spleen disruption following a retropleural minimal invasive approach in a patient with an underlying grade II spleen lesion occurred 8 days before and considered safe by the general surgeon. We conclude that even negligible spleen injuries must be considered an absolute contraindication to thoracolumbar junction lateral approach even with minimal invasive techniques.

Article Info

Article Type

Case Report

Publication history

Received: Tue 17, Nov 2020
Accepted: Mon 07, Dec 2020
Published: Fri 18, Dec 2020

Copyright

© 2023 Michele Cappuccio. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.SCR.2020.12.17